Chapter 141: Among Fellow Human-Parts Collectors, It's Pure Naked Hatred
Neon had been raised in complete indulgence, and her personality showed it. Willful didn't begin to cover it. Growing up inside a criminal family had also given her a certain detachment from human life in general.
But beyond not treating her family's crime outfit members as real people, and beyond the human body parts collection, Neon was genuinely good to the people around her. So the moment she came back to herself and found all her maids collapsed on the floor, she pinned the blame directly on the uninvited handsome gentleman without a second thought.
That reaction made Dracula blink. Then, unexpectedly, a smile crossed his face.
Truly worthy of being his wife. Even reborn, she had the nerve to face the lord of Castlevania head-on.
Words alone weren't going to work with Neon at this point, so Dracula let a specific power rise from within him, aura in local terminology, and without preamble, gently took hold of the hand she was still pointing at him.
Neon's instinct was to pull away and resist. But in the next instant, something stirred deep in her, a trembling of the soul, and her body stopped.
Memories began surfacing in her mind. Memories from another life. The ones carved into the depths of a soul that had once been Dracula's wife.
Meeting him, knowing him, falling in love with him. Carrying Alucard to term and giving birth. Being seized by the Church for the crime of believing in science. Urging her husband, even as they bound her to the pyre, not to hate humanity. And finally, the image of everything being swallowed by fire.
The pure spoiled-heiress quality that had defined her until a moment ago began, slowly, to give way to something else. The bearing of someone who had never feared breaking through the boundaries of convention, who had pressed boldly into the unknown.
After a long moment, the hand Dracula was holding twisted around, took the lead, and then:
Two fingers caught the pale skin on the back of his hand and pinched.
"Letting yourself into a lady's room uninvited is not what a gentleman does, my dear."
Whether to call her Neon or Lisa was unclear, but whichever she was, her face held a smile while something visibly pulsed at her temple.
Dracula, who could produce his own organs on request and hand them to a child without flinching, felt nothing from this particular pain. He let out a long breath. And then, with an expression that the lord of Castlevania had no business wearing, he said it.
"Welcome back."
"...I'm back."
Both of Neon's hands closed over his.
At that same moment, far away at the Spirit Wave Style dojo on an island nation, Ross was sitting cross-legged in deep mental training, working on sharpening his Nen control, when a string of notifications blinked into view.
[The Castlevania III Secret Realm has added a new configurable BOSS unit: Lisa Tepes / Neon Nostrad.]
[Lisa Tepes / Neon Nostrad may only appear as a companion BOSS paired with either Dracula Vlad Tepes or Alucard.]
[Lisa Tepes / Neon Nostrad fills a pure support role, has no independent HP bar, predicts the player's movement in advance, and assists the BOSS in executing anticipatory attacks against the player.]
"...What."
"You're distracted!"
Ross's pupils were already going sideways from the notification content, but Master Genkai, who had no idea any of this was happening, landed a loving smack directly on top of his head.
His beloved Lisa had finally returned to his side. But the situation was not quite what Dracula had expected.
Soul domination had brought everything belonging to the Lisa of her previous life flooding back successfully. But everything that was Neon had not disappeared in the process.
A short current life and an equally not-very-long previous life had merged into one. The result was someone who was simultaneously Neon and Lisa, both personalities and both sets of preferences fully present.
Her way of referring to herself was still "Neon," which Dracula found both novel and subtly disorienting.
It produced the distinct impression of infidelity without any actual infidelity having occurred.
Age was not a concern. Lisa had been roughly Neon's current age when she married him the first time.
"And who is this?"
Neon tilted her head and looked at the small figure who had been standing quietly to one side this entire time.
"Alluka and Nanika. They're the ones who led me to you."
Dracula explained it gently.
"Hi, big sister."
Alluka greeted Neon with quiet, well-mannered politeness.
For Alluka, who had been locked in an underground vault and treated as a dangerous anomaly by her own family, Dracula was the only person in all these years, aside from Killua, who had shown her not the slightest trace of rejection. And something about his appearance gave Alluka a strangely familiar feeling, something like family, an instinctive warmth.
Not seeing Killua was genuinely sad. But the exhilaration of being outside for the first time in so long was enough to hold the sadness at bay.
"You sweet thing."
When Alluka called her "big sister," Neon's eyes lit up slightly and the smile came without her permission. Her hand reached out immediately.
As someone who had already given birth to Alucard in her previous life, even with Neon's maiden-life soul merged in, being called "big sister" by a small child still produced an instinctive warmth.
Alluka was enjoying the head-patting when her expression shifted. Her eyes and mouth went solid black, signaling that Nanika, the Dark Continent entity inside her, had come to the surface voluntarily.
Neon's hand didn't so much as tremble. The patting continued at exactly the same pressure.
She had married Dracula back when Castlevania was already built, when every kind of demon and monster served under him, when even Death itself worked as a steward. What had she not seen?
If she hadn't had some kind of brain-blank moment back then, when the Church came for her, and let some measure of martyrdom get into her head rather than doing anything to escape, she might well have been around long enough to eventually receive the embrace and join the vampires herself.
"Oh, sweetheart! Neon has something she wants!"
Still holding Alluka and Nanika against her chest like a doll, Neon seemed to remember something and turned to Dracula with slightly elevated energy.
"What is it. Where is it. I'll get it."
Dracula answered in a flat declarative statement, and incidentally laid the groundwork for something else he had in mind.
Neon ran the mental calculation. The mummy and the tissue with the DNA certificate were uncertain on location and hard to obtain on short notice. But the scarlet eyes, she knew exactly where those were, because the insufferable owner had bragged about his collection more than once in various circles.
Among all the ones in circulation outside the Yorknew City auction, that person held the largest collection by a significant margin.
"The fourth prince of the Kakin Empire! That unbearable man has the scarlet eyes Neon wants!"