Chapter 18 - Blood Ball (II)

The ballroom seemed to be illuminated by the soft light from the chandeliers above, and slow, comfortable music was playing in the background and reverberating around the room. Beautifully dressed men and women chatted in groups separated by gender. All involved in different topics, talking quietly and seemingly happily.

In his eyes, everyone seemed to be smiling with joy, although it was undeniably a false smile. It's like they say, you don't hit someone who's smiling. This was a metaphor for all the people present in this elegant ballroom. Everyone had intentions hidden behind kind greetings and words of comfort.

But the slightest carelessness would turn your life upside down, making your life in this caste society extremely difficult. They would stab you in the back at the slightest show of weakness, which has been the fate of many Noble Houses over the millennia.

Rising and falling was merely everyone's fate.

Something that every Agrece Patriarch and Matriarch tried to avoid over time, even if it caused damage to everything around them.

House Agrece was more important than everything and everyone else; they had a duty to be judge, jury and executioner of all.

Alastor brought the glass containing grape juice to his lips and looked around as he filtered out all the flattery and uninteresting topics from the teenagers around him. His eyes were fixed on his sister.

She was surrounded by other girls of a similar age, all of them as proud and spoiled as you could expect from a luxurious upbringing. Honestly, at least half of the girls around his sister would be used as marriage tools to gain benefits from their own Noble Houses.

That's what happened if you weren't very talented in this society, but it wasn't just the women who were, either; men who weren't very talented were also fated to have political marriages and often with unattractive wives.

Alastor couldn't help but be happy knowing that he was engaged and far from any political marriage. Unlike the others, who would probably only see their brides on the day they got married.

Suddenly, Alastor noticed that the voices around him had completely ceased, he looked over and discovered that there was a girl older than him, perhaps around fifteen, smiling at him with an amused look.

"You don't seem interested in the ball, Sir Alastor." She spoke in a calm, elegant tone as she closed her purple fan.

Alastor didn't reply and looked coldly at the older girl, showing no intention of starting a conversation.

Perhaps noticing this, the girl's smile didn't falter, she looked at Alastor with a growing interest in her gaze.

"I hear you've started carrying out missions. How was it? Very bloody, did you vomit and how did it feel to kill for the first time?" She asked with a smile on her lips, sipping her wine as she looked at him. Her words contained a hidden sarcasm that made Alastor look at her in surprise.

The delicate-looking girl in front of him was unexpectedly rude, which surprised him greatly.

Alastor pondered for a moment, remembering what it felt like to kill. He hesitated to speak, but continued. "I'd say it was strange, deciding the fate of others with your hands is quite... invasive."

"Invasive..." The girl showed a thoughtful expression before nodding with a smile on her lips. "Yes, it is quite invasive. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about being invasive with occultists."

Alastor nodded in agreement with her words. There really was no need for hesitation in their actions against monsters who were occultists. They were monsters that needed to be killed, period.

The young Alastor thought of his sister, what had she felt when killing for the first time? Pleasure? Happiness? Sadism? Perhaps euphoria?

"By the way, Lisanne Vertium." The girl introduced herself by holding out her hand.

Alastor looked surprised at her surname and took her hand by the tips of her fingers and kissed it, touching his lips to the white lace glove that wrapped around her hand.

"Alastor Agrece."

Alastor then took his first look at the girl. She was tall, measuring 1.70. Her straight, slightly wavy hair fell in a cascade of soft, silver strands, framing an elegant face with naturally cold features. Her eyes, similar to her hair, were a shade of silver that reminded him of the moon in the night sky.

Silver hair and silver eyes and her last name. Alastor knew that the girl belonged to one of the five Houses of Grimms still remaining in the world - House Vertium.

Unlike House Agrece, House Vertium was not as strong, as rich or even as famous. They had always been discreet in Lordran, perhaps that was their method of surviving for so long.

Curiously, all the gifts awakened by House Vertium were somehow linked to light and nature.

Looking into her eyes, Alastor didn't see her Assassin's Eyes, which belonged to Cain himself after committing the first murder.

 This meant that Lisanne hadn't awakened her Gift, although it didn't mean that she wasn't talented.

Noticing his actions, Lisanne smiled and spoke graciously. "Unfortunately, I do not possess the beautiful eyes of our ancestor, my parents were not so incestuous."

Alastor nodded without any surprise, House Agrece had always been strange in the eyes of the world because of its obsession with keeping the blood pure. Including the twenty-five Original Houses, they all stopped practicing blood purity at some point, concentrating on other fields.

Except Casa Agrece.

"The thought of marrying my brother makes me want to vomit." Lisanne spoke with a tone of disgust, remembering her brother.

Alastor could have been offended, but he noticed that her animosity wasn't directed at incest, but at her own brother.

"Don't you two get along?" He asked with a genuinely curious tone.

"Not everyone has such good relations with their own siblings. Sir Alastor." Lisanne looked at Alastor and explained, seeing his genuine expression of curiosity.

Theron Vertium was garbage in her eyes, no, he was worse than garbage, garbage could still be recycled, Theron could not. He was a playboy who spent his days in brothels, arrogant, lustful and with disgusting habits. Lisanne would rather die than marry someone like him.

Alastor was intrigued, he could never imagine hating his twin sister, she was his sun, his other half, someone he couldn't even think of hurting once. So he was intrigued by the feelings of disgust that Lisanne spoke to her own brother.

Without realizing it, Alastor engaged in a pleasant conversation with Lisanne, something he didn't even notice himself. She was sarcastic, spoke her mind without hiding behind lies and was a pleasant party companion.

Lisanne was also enjoying talking to Alastor, although he was five years younger than her, he could practically answer anything she asked, showing that his level of erudition was very high.

What's more, she discovered that she enjoyed trying to get Alastor to show something other than coldness and indifference. Something that, despite trying, she didn't manage once. However, she didn't give up, on the contrary, she just got more excited.

Looking at his cold and extraordinarily handsome face, Lisanne felt that if Theron were like Alastor, she might agree to marry him, but unfortunately the difference between the two was so great that they couldn't even compare.

To compare someone like Theron with Alastor was to insult the young Agrece's genius and beauty.

Theron wasn't even a man in her eyes, he was a coward who, instead of training and becoming stronger, abandoned everything and gave himself over to the normal world, abandoning his family to stay among prostitutes and harlots.

On his first mission, he ran away causing unnecessary deaths. If it hadn't been for her father paying an exorbitant price to free Theron from the Order's trial, he would have rotted in a cell for a long time.

In comparison, Alastor not only started carrying out missions at the age of ten, contributing to his House, but also had an extraordinary amount of knowledge about mysticism.

--------------------

Read more than 20 advanced chapters in my Patre on!

P-atreon.com/TheRadiantPrince

(Just remove the hyphen to access Patreon normally.)