Chapter 66 Nosferatu and the First Evolution
Killing, extortion, kidnapping, torturing, the female did it all, and most of the time, her targets were kids.
She was almost at the peak of below Tier I and Lyle had to be cautious about her, but in the end, the boost he was given during the night proved to be significant enough for him to take her down quietly before proceeding the same way as he did with the others and turning her inside a dungeon.
Her transformation, however, was the difference.
Compared to the others who generally stayed the same, but had their physique changed slightly with their height being different, hair growing out, and such, the woman went through a completely different transformation.
Her hair fell out of her head. Her body started growing slightly while the muscles changed and became larger. Her back hunched slightly and her skin turned gray.
Her eyes were seemingly gone as there were no irises or pupils visible on her eyes, they had simply turned white as if she was blind now.
Multiple small bumps appeared on the top of her head, and from her back, a pair of small wings sprouted.
She now looked completely like a monster.
Claws appeared on both her hands and feet as her clothes got shredded from her growth. There was no longer any way to even check if she was truly female or even male as her chest was gone, replaced by a bony armor that was wrapped around the upper area of the torso.
There was also nothing between the legs either.
'Nosferatu.' Lyle thought as he stared at the being in front of him.
Well, to call this a true 'Nosferatu' was not really true. Nosferatu were powerful old vampires, some were born in such a way, while some became like this after being turned. They were usually at minimum as strong as a Golden Knight.
From what Lyle knew, for someone to get turned into a Nosferatu meant that their soul was dark and corrupted, so much so that there was no chance of them ever being able to repent for the things they had committed.
Nosferatu were powerful and on average were even stronger than true vampires, but what sets them apart was their fighting style as compared to true vampires, they didn't have the same abilities, but mostly used their high physical strength and robust bodies to fight, while using poison or corruption to help them out in battles.
Those were the two abilities that Nosferatus could gain after turning, there had never been a case of a Nosferatu using any other ability other than poison or corruption.
The corruption ability was not the same as Lyle's darkness manipulation which could also corrupt and corrodes beings, but a very special kind of ability that Lyle knew very little of. The Nosferatus, however, had four weaknesses.
First, they were truly blind and used a sort of echolocation in order to orient themselves.
Second, they couldn't stand the sun and their powers would be weakened during the daytime.
Third, they were always in pain and their mental states were fragile, often leading to them turning berserk and slaughtering everything around them before being put down or somehow calmed down.
Fourth, their physical appearance made it impossible for them to blend in.
Lyle was mildly disgusted at the being in front of himself and decided to get rid of it immediately.
He didn't even wish to do any kind of experimenting on it and simply took out his dagger before coming closer to the being and decapitating it with one swift strike.
His calm eyes showed no remorse or pity for the creature, only disgust as he knew that the woman he had turned had to be even worse than he expected in order for her to actually be turned into a Nosferatu.
Lyle didn't need to do anything else to the body as the dungeon had already started assimilating it into itself. The only thing that Lyle was slightly apprehensive about was whether the dungeon would somehow gain the ability to produce more of them after devouring the body of this one.
She and Lyle were both a lot more powerful than the other monsters of this dungeon, which should be enough to not allow the dungeon to do so, but if the dungeon was to evolve, then there was a possibility of more Nosferatus to spawn inside.
Still, Lyle decided not to think too much about it and left the dungeon before returning to the inn.
Today, he and Adam were finally going to evolve.
Evolution was incredibly important and they would need to find a quiet place in order for nobody to bother them.
A dungeon was perfect for doing hidden stuff, but it was not good for evolution at all.
The powerful mana waves and the need for a lot of mana during the evolution would mean that Lyle and Adam would start stealing the mana from the dungeon, which would lead to the dungeon itself expelling or even injuring them.
They had to go deep inside the forest in order to find a secluded spot.
Thankfully, the forests near Linston only had weak monsters that wouldn't be able to threaten Lyle and Adam in the slightest. Most people wouldn't really care for such things and would simply face the evolution in a safe place, usually, that meant booking special rooms from the adventurers guild or the city itself and attempting to evolve.
But Lyle didn't want people to know that the two of them were evolving right now. He didn't want to let anyone see the evolution since there was no saying whether someone would somehow recognize him.
The chances for something like that to happen were abysmally low, but Lyle didn't really like to take any unnecessary risk, which meant that he and Adam had to go deep inside the forest and had spent over 2 hours to simply find a suitable spot to evolve.
After doing so, both of them first took out many items that Lyle had bought inside Linston. They were mostly monster repellants that the two were going to spread around in the area just in case any monster wandered too close.
There were also multiple traps they had set up, and in the end, they needed a full 3 hours for it.
Lyle knew that monsters would usually run away after sensing that someone was going through an evolution since the powerful mana waves would scare them off, but there were some rare cases where monsters decided to do the opposite and end up attacking the person or monster that was going through an evolution.
Adam and Lyle then sat down, both making sure they were a couple of meters away from each other.
Lyle didn't know exactly what to expect from the evolution, he had previously gone through it, but with his new powers and with him now being a Vampire Lord, it was bound to be different.
Usually, one needed to not only get to a high enough level but there would also be requirements in order to break through.
Each person would have to take their time and slowly understand what was needed for them before evolving, with the help of the system, that was now easy to be known as people would find a challenge upon reaching the top of their current tier and would need to do the challenge missions that the system had given them before evolving.
For Lyle and Adam, that was not the case.
Lyle was a Vampire Lord, a being that was at the very least a Tier VI being.
Until reaching that level, Lyle would have no true bottlenecks and wouldn't need to spend time going through the challenges in order to evolve and could do it at any time he wished. As his servant, Adam was also not required to do any challenge, and neither would any of his servants, but they would be unable to ever go above him in level or evolution.
If Lyle was to somehow fail the evolution and Adam was to succeed, then he would regress back as the bloodline and his class would not allow for him to be more powerful than his master.
The two sat quietly for about 5 minutes before changes appeared. A breeze started blowing around them as their mana emptied out completely before a powerful suction appeared from the two of them.
Mana started being drawn over to the two, at first slowly, but it picked up speed and more of it came to them as more time passed.
If one was to look at them from above, they would seem to be in the center of a tornado that was drawing everything around to itself.
Slowly, blood appeared around Lyle.
It was his own blood that had flown out from his body and started shrouding him completely. After it formed a giant ball of blood around him, his power of darkness also manifested and completely coiled around the ball, making it pitch black.
As for Adam, he was fully shrouded in darkness and his figure was invisible.
The evolution had truly started at that point.