Chapter 147: The Zoldycks' Humiliation and Compromise
Dracula was still evil. That was beyond question. Finding the reincarnation of his wife hadn't erased any of the past or changed who he was.
His hatred of humanity and God remained entirely intact. He had simply chosen not to act on it for now.
Everything Dracula was currently doing, he was doing for Neon. Nothing more.
Which meant: as long as Neon was alive and happy, the unusual Castlevania that allowed monsters and humans to coexist in temporary harmony would continue to exist alongside her.
Dracula was a vampire. He had unlimited time to wait for Neon's natural lifespan to run its course. When it did, he would bind her soul to his side permanently. And then he would get back to the business of doing what a great demon lord was supposed to do.
Provided, of course, that no one caused trouble in the meantime.
And of course, someone caused trouble.
Trevor, whose life's purpose was the destruction of Dracula, tracked the relocated Castlevania down the moment it moved.
But when he discovered that Castlevania had somehow become a place where humans and monsters were genuinely coexisting, his first instinct, that Dracula was obviously up to something, was checked by the undeniable fact that no matter how many times he had demolished the place, it always rebuilt itself. He didn't charge in. He hung back and watched the new Castlevania from a distance.
He even found himself thinking: if this state could continue indefinitely, was there actually still a reason to take Dracula down?
Trevor, who should by every rule of fate have been tangled with Dracula forever, chose not to act. But two other parties did.
The first to move was, somewhat surprisingly, Ging Freecss.
Ging had been investing enormous amounts of time into researching Castlevania and had been approaching the tail end of his academic investigation when Dracula pulled the whole castle out from under him and moved it. Then Dracula went and modified the rules to make it more habitable for humans, which sent Ging's interest spiking back up to levels it had no business reaching at this stage.
He didn't just track it down. He actually got into a fight with Dracula.
It happened while Ross was asleep, so he missed the live broadcast. All Ross knew was that after that exchange, Ging was granted permission to move freely through all parts of Castlevania except the family's primary living quarters.
Then there were the Zoldycks, who mobilized the entire family. The reasons behind that were actually more complicated than they looked.
Ross had assumed his misdirection was flawless. What he didn't know was that Hisoka had received a Memory Bullet from Pakunoda, and through it had "seen" the memory of Phinks dying.
So when the still-rational Illumi compared notes with the carefully-contained Hisoka, Hisoka understood: Phinks had "come back from the dead." And based on prior experience, the only thing capable of perfectly recreating everything about someone after death was Castlevania. But Hisoka hadn't told Illumi any of this.
It wasn't only revenge for Illumi trying to use Gon's life as leverage against him. Hisoka also wanted to use the Zoldyck family's muscle to help thin out more spider legs.
After losing three veteran Troupe members, Chrollo had accepted the reality and stopped pretending otherwise, but he hadn't sat down and given up. He had immediately started recruiting to fill the gaps. Hisoka had no interest in watching the Troupe reconstitute itself, so of course he was going to find a way to keep the numbers down.
Initially, Illumi had indeed been misdirected as intended, investigating Troupe member movements while putting together a plan. But one day, his younger brother Milluki forwarded him an email, a news screenshot of the Nostrad family's renaming to the Dracula Family. And in the screenshot, Alluka was clearly visible.
The subsequent observation showed that even with the family head Silva, former head Zeno, eldest son Illumi, and youngest son Kalluto all deployed, the Zoldycks appeared to have gained no advantage whatsoever trying to operate inside Castlevania with Dracula personally present. They had even ended up "donating" Killua to the other side in the process.
Illumi, the ultimate controlling sibling, had been reduced to helpless rage. But helpless rage meant nothing in front of something that embodied the very worst of human evil.
At the time, neither Dracula nor Neon had any particular stake in whether Killua and Alluka stayed or left. It was entirely up to them. Killua, who simply wanted his younger siblings to be able to live in the sunlight (Dracula the vampire: ...) and who had developed something that could only be called love for them, made the most decisive act of defiance in his life.
He chose to stay. He stayed in the Dracula Family. He stayed in Castlevania.
Neon's maternal instincts immediately overflowed. While Alucard stood in the background wearing an expression of purest "please spare me" directed at the ceiling, she pulled both smaller children into her arms and announced "Then you're all my children now!"
Dracula issued the Zoldyck family an eviction order without hesitation, a rules-level eviction functionally similar to Greed Island's banish card, and teleported the entire family out of the castle via spatial displacement.
Apart from Illumi, who remained attached like a burr and refused to let go, the rest of the family had more or less accepted the situation as reality.
That was simply how this world worked. The biggest fist won. Anything else was just noise.
Silva even managed to convince himself that once Killua had enough experience in the outside world, he would eventually return to the Zoldyck family and assume his position as the next head. Being apprenticed to a power this overwhelming was, in its own way, a rare and valuable opportunity.
As for Alluka and the entity within her, with Killua there as a stabilizing factor, surely, probably, possibly, things wouldn't go too far wrong. Right?
Finally, there was the Phantom Troupe. Strictly speaking, they hadn't been drawn in by the relocated Castlevania. They had been drawn in by Ging, who had made absolutely no effort to conceal his movements.
The Troupe's capacity for grudges was considerable. Even having had two more legs crushed flat by Ging like he was running over speed bumps, that grudge hadn't gone away. But they couldn't beat him in a straight fight. What to do?
Simple: you go after the people around him instead.
So they lurked like spiders in the gutters, trying to identify anyone more closely connected to Ging, family, friends, associates, as a roundabout target for their revenge.
What they probably hadn't anticipated was that Ging Freecss's social network was essentially nonexistent.
The spectacle of Dracula relocating Castlevania had impressed Ross deeply, and at the same time gave him a genuine spark of inspiration.
The way Castlevania had merged with the Nostrad family to produce the Dracula Family was something new: for someone like Ross who was used to operating alone or occasionally teaming up for specific tasks, it planted the idea of building a real, proper faction of his own.
And as it happened, he had something on hand that was actually suited to serve as a base.
The real-world Secret Realm derived from the Nekketsu Series.