Dragon of Endless Evil

The Nikmar family manor counted eleven legitimate children. Conrad was not counted among them, even though he grew up within the same walls.

His mother, Julia, had been a chambermaid in the east wing of the estate for twelve years before his birth. She cleaned the apartments of the old chief Raymon, changed the sheets, tended the fire in the rooms in winter.

One winter night, Raymon had called her into his room while he was drunk on wine. Julia had not been allowed to refuse. Nine months later, Conrad was born in the servants’ quarters.

The Sword Clan charter nevertheless recognized the blood, even illegitimate. Conrad had therefore grown up in the manor in the servants’ area.

Conrad’s half-brothers called him "the son of the whore." The oldest, Reiner, was twelve years older than him and took particular pleasure in reminding him of his place. One summer afternoon, when Conrad was eight years old and training alone in the courtyard with a wooden sword too heavy for his arms, Reiner had approached with two other brothers.

"Look who’s trying to play the knight." Reiner had torn the sword from Conrad’s hands and thrown it into the basin, then beaten him like a piece of shit in front of the servants.

"Knights have a father, half-nothing. You only have a servant who spreads her legs."

Conrad had said nothing. He had gone down into the basin, recovered the soaked sword, and continued training until nightfall, alone, while his brothers’ laughter still echoed from the manor windows.

The family tutor refused to teach him the advanced techniques, "reserved for legitimate children," he said, so Conrad observed the lessons from the half-open door, memorized the movements, then reproduced them alone in the darkness of the stable where no one would come to disturb him. He trained until his palms bled. He studied the strategy texts that his brothers discarded once read, gluing them back page by page under his straw mattress.

Nothing worked. His talent with the sword remained mediocre, his mastery of chi never exceeded average, no matter how many hours he devoted to it. He worked three times harder than his brothers to produce, at best, half of their results.

Then, in the year he turned sixteen, a considerable sum was found missing from the coffers of the twelfth district. The estate steward, eager to close the matter before the chief demanded accounts, had pointed to Julia. A servant with no family to defend her.

His mother had sworn her innocence to the end. No one had listened to her. She had been executed three days later, according to the clan charter that punished the theft of common funds with death, and her body had been burned in the common pit reserved for the clan’s worst criminals, with no grave where anyone could ever gather.

Conrad had not been allowed to attend the cremation. He had learned of it from a servant.

That evening, away from the main wing where his brothers lodged, Conrad had sat against the wall and let the tears flow, his head between his knees.

"I am far too mediocre..."

He looked at his hands, covered in calluses formed by years of relentless training for a result that never came.

"Why is life so unfair?"

His voice broke. He clenched his fists until his nails dug into his palms.

"Why are there those who are born with everything! And others who are born with nothing?"

He thought of Reiner, who had never had to train more than an hour a day to surpass in skill everything Conrad could produce in a month. He thought of his mother, whose name would appear in no register, whose ashes had mixed with those of strangers she had never met in her lifetime.

"Mother... Why be born, if only to become the subordinate of others? What is this shitty life?"

...

The following years changed nothing about this primary truth: Conrad had neither talent nor luck. He had average intelligence, basic sword mastery and nothing more, and a status not so different from a commoner.

He understood, with age, that life is unfair and will remain so, that he had only one exploitable skill left: his ability to flatter, to anticipate the desires of the powerful, to make himself indispensable without ever becoming a threat. It was not a talent one respected. But it was a talent that allowed one to survive.

That is how he became the right-hand man of Markus, heir of the Sword Clan. Markus offered him protection, and he even eventually became heir of the district. In exchange, Conrad carried out the missions that Markus judged too dirty for his own hands: tailing, blackmail, and sometimes, far more dangerous affairs.

One of these missions consisted of transmitting sensitive information from the Sword Clan to the Spear Clan, in secret. If the operation were ever discovered, the clan charter would designate Conrad as the sole responsible party. That was the price for remaining in his good graces: carrying alone the risk that his master did not have to bear.

That day, while he was to deliver a report in one of the district’s clandestine establishments, Conrad met for the first time the chief of the Shadow Clan.

A man they simply called Vamp.

...

Years later... One week after Conrad had lost the fight against Daemon.

The establishment was located on the outskirts of the Magic Clan territory, concealed behind the banal facade of a pleasure house. Upstairs, in one of the private rooms, Conrad was ushered in without a word by a servant who closed the door behind him at once.

The room appeared ordinary at first glance. It was only as he advanced that Conrad noticed the two women lying on the bed, their skin pale with two marks on their necks, presumably their blood had been sucked.

Conrad stopped, his throat dry.

A piano occupied the back of the room. The man seated before it had his back to the door. His dreadlocked hair was the exact color of fresh blood. His skin was dark, and when he moved his fingers over the keys, his nails, too long to be natural for a human, clicked lightly.

The melody he played was simple. Slow chords that could have passed for clumsy in anyone else. Yet the whole produced a tension that made Conrad uneasy.

"How do you find this melody, Conrad?" the man asked, without turning around.

"Huh!? It’s... it’s sublime, Lord Vamp..." Conrad swallowed.

"Hmm... I find it so too. I called it *Vamp Anthem*." His fingers continued to run over the keys, never accelerating. "I find it stylish that I play it at every meeting. It adds tension, and I can quietly gain even more aura of a mysterious entity... Don’t you think?"

Conrad felt fear knot his stomach. He bent his knees and knelt on the carpet, his forehead nearly to the floor.

"I apologize, My Lord... But I could not accomplish my mission... I beg you, give me another chance to prove myself, I underestimated Daemon."

"Hmm~ All right."

"All right?"

"I am quite magnanimous, you know. When I was young and human..."

"Human...?"

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