The next morning.
Sunlight spilled into the bedroom through the gaps in the curtains.
Lorevil opened her eyes.
Yesterday, she had massaged Noxia until the girl fell into a deep sleep, and then Lorevil had taken a soothing hot bath herself. Perhaps it was the exhaustion from days of practical training, but once she relaxed, she slept until she woke up naturally, feeling exceptionally energetic.
Next, it was time to start taking over Thorns.
If she could meet her expectations, Lorevil might be able to establish a foothold in Holy Blood City and help gather intelligence. At the same time, she could repay Catherine for her guidance and even gain the recognition of the family elders. Of course, Madam Sharon would also praise her abilities.
Lorevil finished washing up and went straight to the study.
In her memories, the membership list of Thorns had been treated as scrap paper by her original soul and tossed aside in the study. Lorevil searched for a long time before finally finding it under a mahogany chair. It looked like it had been used as a wedge to level the chair’s legs.
‘Family resources are truly wasted on you.’
Lorevil shook her head helplessly, blew the dust off the paper, and began to flip through the list.
To her surprise, the list actually involved quite a few peripheral figures of the family. There were branch members of the Vampire family who relied on Lorevil’s house for survival, ordinary Vampires sent by other small families, and even several descendants of fallen nobles living under assumed names.
And this was just an intelligence organization that the original soul had been given to use, only to discard it carelessly. It seemed Lorevil’s earlier assessment had been conservative; the original soul was stupid to the core.
Lorevil scanned the list from top to bottom and found that the members were roughly divided into two categories.
The majority were ordinary members of the first category, most of whom were low-status Vampires. They included market vendors, carriage drivers, and the like, spread across every corner of Holy Blood City, responsible for collecting the most basic daily intelligence.
The second category consisted of special members who were more powerful. There were 15 members at Tier 2, and only one at Tier 3.
‘The number of ordinary members is too high. Searching for them one by one will take too much time. If I follow the list, I won’t even finish in a single day,’ Lorevil thought.
Moreover, as Madam Sharon had mentioned, they hadn’t been paid for a year, so they had likely sought other ways to make a living long ago.
Lorevil quickly made a decision. She would look for the special members first.
Those at Tier 2 and Tier 3 were stronger. If she could find a few of them, they might be able to help her locate the other members, allowing her to slowly rebuild and consolidate Thorns.
In her memory, the Tier 3 member was the leader of the organization — responsible and loyal. However, when he failed to get the unpaid wages from the original soul, he was humiliated and driven away. Discouraged, he had vanished ever since.
Lorevil noted the addresses of the special members on the list, especially those of the 15 Tier 2 Vampires. Then, she tucked the list away, boarded the family carriage, and instructed the driver to head to the addresses in order.
The carriage traveled through the streets of Holy Blood City, moving from the noble district to the commoner areas, and then to the outskirts of the city.
Lorevil got off the carriage to knock on doors time and time again. The responses she received were either that the person had long since moved away or that the owner was not home. Some houses didn’t even give a response at all.
3 hours passed, and Lorevil had already visited the addresses of 13 Tier 2 Vampires without seeing a single person.
Lorevil leaned back against the carriage seat, frowning. She couldn’t help but feel a bit dejected.
‘I can’t possibly fail to find even one, right?’
There were two left. Should she just head back?
Lorevil hesitated for a moment. She decided against giving up. Since she was already here, she might as well finish the last two addresses to bring today’s search to a close.
Lorevil glanced at the list.
The last two names on the list were right next to each other. The notes indicated they were sisters, the final special members. They used to live in the chaotic slums outside the city, but they currently lived in a small house outside the Second Ring of the noble district. These two could be considered semi-local Vampires.
“To the last address,” Lorevil instructed the driver.
The carriage turned and headed toward the area outside the Second Ring.
This area was mostly filled with small, detached houses with simple decorations. Most of the residents were commoner Vampires with decent financial backgrounds. The environment was relatively quiet, lacking the hustle and bustle of the city center.
Soon, the carriage stopped in front of a small, cream-colored house.
The house wasn’t large and came with a tiny yard. The wooden fence at the entrance was kept clean and tidy, showing that the owners put a lot of care into it.
This was the address of the Vampire sisters.
It looked like someone was living there. Holding onto her last bit of hope, Lorevil stepped out of the carriage, walked to the yard gate, and knocked on the wooden door.
“Is anyone home? I am Lorevil. I’m looking for the sisters, Ira and Iline,” Lorevil called out.
*Thump, thump…*
*Thump, thump…*
She knocked three times in a row, but no one responded. After calling out a few more times and confirming there was no movement inside, Lorevil felt deeply disappointed. It seemed this morning’s efforts would yield no harvest at all.
The moment Lorevil turned to leave, two Vampire girls suddenly appeared behind the gap in the curtains of the second-floor window.
The girl on the left was named Ira. She had short, neat silver hair, and her purple eyes watched Lorevil’s retreating back warily. She was the elder sister. Years ago, it was she who had brought her younger sister, Iline, into Thorns. She had thought they could use the organization’s resources to give her sister a better life.
She never expected to encounter a master like the original soul. Wages had been withheld for over a year, and no tasks were issued.
The girl on the right, Iline, had shoulder-length hair and reddish-brown eyes filled with deep caution.
“Sister, is it really Lady Lorevil? Why would she come looking for us?” Iline pulled on her sister’s sleeve, speaking in a volume only the two of them could hear.
“I don’t know,” Ira whispered. “In the past, someone like her never had people like us in her eyes. Not to mention coming to our door personally, it was difficult even to see her once. Now that she’s suddenly looking for us, it might not be anything good.”
Although the Vampire sisters had moved out of the slums, they had never truly left Thorns. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to go, but as low-level Vampires from the slums, they had experienced enough of the world to know the consequences of deserting an organization if a noble decided to pursue it.
As a result, the sisters had neither received any tasks from Thorns for over a year nor contacted any other members. They were completely in the dark about the current situation. They could only guess that Thorns might have disbanded, but they didn’t dare take any risks and continued to live in the house recorded on the list.
So, when they heard Lorevil’s voice, their first instinct was to hide. Ira didn’t know what Lorevil’s sudden visit was for; perhaps it was to force them into some dangerous mission.
“Then… what should we do? Should we… call her back?” Iline asked in a small voice, seeing her sister’s conflicted expression.
“Wait,” Ira said solemnly. “Let’s see what she does next. If she truly came to reorganize Thorns, she will definitely come back. If it’s just a whim, going out now would only be asking for trouble.”
“But, we… we can barely make ends meet now. Everyone in the slums will go hungry,” Iline said hesitantly.
“Then we’ll wait two days. We still have a bit of the reward left from our previous tasks. For now, we won’t take those scattered intelligence jobs,” Ira sighed.
Ira had heard quite a bit about Lorevil lately. She knew that in the recent practical training at Holy Blood Academy, Lorevil seemed to have become a different person, training hard and achieving good results.
This gave Ira a faint glimmer of hope. Perhaps Lorevil really was here for her and Iline…
Meanwhile, Lorevil sat in the carriage, lost in thought. Since she couldn’t find the last two either, the state of Thorns was even worse than she had imagined.
Should she ask Madam Sharon for help?