The forest was eerily silent, bathed in the sinister glow of a blood-red moon hanging in the sky.
Eleanor stood with her back to a dark ancient tree, with a cold composure.
A moment later, a shadowy figure seemed to materialize from the darkness itself.
"You came," she uttered, her voice laced with disdain.
"How could I not come when a vampire princess such as Lady Eleanor called?" the shadowy figure replied.
Her voice was feminine and melodious, but filled with a sycophantic tone.
"That would be disloyal."
Eleanor scoffed, a humorless laugh escaping her lips.
"No need to bootlick. I know how loyal you are." Her gaze turned sharp, and a cruel smirk twisted her lips.
"I even heard you poisoned your sister just a day before. A pity she didn't die."
She mocked the figure, ridiculing her words as if they were nothing more than a childish plea for validation.
"Yes, such a pity," the shadowy figure said, rubbing her head and looking quite helpless.
"If she had died, Lady Eleanor would have fewer headaches, and I would have a nuisance removed."
She sighed with her voice filled with feigned regret.
"And it was the only chance I had to eliminate her. What a pity."
Eleanor's gaze remained cold.
"What if I told you that you could still kill her?"
The shadowy figure's eyes glowed from within her hood, and a mischievous smile stretched across her lips.
"What a wonderful proposition. Can I hear more about it?"
Eleanor's own smile was chilling. "First, I have a condition." Her demand was a cold like a sharp blade.
.....
After finishing her deal with the mysterious figure, Eleanor rubbed the mark on her neck with a sweet smile.
"Now, let's see where my darling is.
After all that naughty guy won't stay in one place for long."
She reached out through her connection to him.
But...
Her smile immediately turned ugly.
Her darling was in his home.
That wasn't the problem.
The problem was, he wasn't alone.
....
A man with deep blonde hair woke up in a dark hall, a groggy feeling like a hangover clouding his mind.
He found himself bound on a sofa, the soft cushions doing little to comfort his rising panic.
A throbbing headache pulsed behind his eyes as he desperately tried to recall what had happened.
He remembered the party... the beautiful bartender... her leading him somewhere... but after that, nothing.
A chilling realization dawned on him. 'I've been kidnapped.'
"You are finally awake," an old voice said.
It exuded wisdom with every syllable, yet sent a shiver down his spine.
He looked up and saw an old man with an extremely long beard standing on the steps of a huge staircase.
"No need to panic, young man. You are safe here," the old man said, calmly rubbing his long beard.
"Where am I, and why did you abduct me?" Victor demanded, his voice trembling despite his best efforts to sound brave.
The old man calmly came down to his level.
By floating.
'Huh?' Victor thought, bewildered.
'Since when do humans have the ability to fly?'
"Ahem, let me introduce myself," the old man said, a placid smile on his face.
"I am Braham Faust, an elder of the Faust household. And you, young man, are to be wed into my family."
"Huhhhh!!!!!!" Victor shrieked, his voice cracking with disbelief.
He immediately followed it with an angry shout.
"What the fuck do you mean by 'wed'?! Just when I'd finally escaped from that shitty, fake-girlfriend situation, you want to drag me into a forced marriage?!"
"Now, now, young man," the old man, Braham, said calmly, his words holding a cruel, unyielding tone.
"You don't have a choice either way. Or you would die."
"Die? What do you mean?" Victor's panic surged. He was even more scared now.
"Well, you witnessed me floating, right? That's magic, and only a few are born with the talent to master magic," Braham explained.
"And you, young man, are born with the blood of the greatest mage." His voice took on a tone of deep reverence.
"You are born with the blood of the master of Ars Goetia.
You are the descendant of King Solomon, the Lord of the Seventy-Two Pillars of demon gods."
The old man finished with a look of awe, as if speaking of a legendary god.
But Victor wasn't happy about it at all.
'Nooooo! I don't want to become an experiment for mages!' his mind screamed.
What did he expect? To be happy? Of course not.
He was kidnapped by a creepy old man who called himself Faust
A name that immediately brought to mind the legendary wizard who summoned the demon Mephistopheles.
He was in so much trouble.
....
I was in a tight situation.
No, I was literally in a tight situation. Iris was hugging me like a bear, not even letting me move an inch.
It was all my fault, of course.
I had told her I was leaving, and she immediately started acting like a pitiful, abandoned puppy, hugging me so tight I couldn't possibly escape.
"Iris, dear, I need to leave," I said gently, rubbing her head.
But she didn't budge.
"No! If I let you leave, you'll go find your other mate. I don't want to share you," she said, her voice muffled against my chest.
"But I'm your Alpha, right? Isn't it normal for me to have more mates?" I reasoned, using her own language against her.
She pulled back, a pout on her face.
"No. My father only had one mate his entire life, and he was the Alpha."
'Fuck. Father-in-law, why didn't you take more mates, damn it?' I thought, cursing the man I had never met.
"Wait... 'had'?" I asked, a sudden change in her tone catching my attention.
"What do you mean by that?"
Before I could question her further, a huge number of bats entered the room through the open window.
They swirled around us, their eyes glowing menacingly as they hovered, surrounding us completely.
I had a feeling I knew who it was, and that feeling came true when the bats transformed into a beautiful Red Haired woman who was wearing a gothic dress.
It was Eleanor, and she was definitely angry.
A fierce scowl was on her face as she looked at us, her eyes burning with an intense rage.
"Darling, can you move aside from that filthy mutt?" she asked me calmly, but her eyes were anything but calm.
"I need to remove a pest from this world."
Iris stopped clinging to me and stood up, her naked breasts jiggling with the movement.
Her face turned hostile as fur covered parts of her body and her hands morphed into razor-sharp claws.
"I never liked you, Eleanor, but I never wanted to kill you," she growled, her voice a low snarl.
"But today you crossed a line you shouldn't have by trying to steal my husband!" Lightning crackled around her body, a clear sign of her rage.
But Eleanor just smirked disdainfully and summoned her briars, thorny vines coiling around her arms like living whips.
"What a coincidence. I never liked you as well. So why don't you leave from here so I can think of sparing you?"
Both of them were about to fight, their auras clashing
However I snapped. I had had enough.
"I don't care about you two fighting!" I shouted, my voice booming with extreme annoyance.
"But do it somewhere else! Not in my room!"
My outburst brought them both back to their senses, and they sighed in sync, the tension in the room immediately dissipating.
"Guess we should fight somewhere else. I don't want to anger my mate," Iris said, dispelling her lightning and retracting her claws.
"I'd like to avoid angering him as well," Eleanor said, making her vines disappear.
'Sigh… Thank goodness.
My limited edition PS6 and Pokémon cards, along with my collection of adult visual novels, were stored in my room.
If they got destroyed, I'd be devastated.
After all A man is lost without his collection,' I thought, a wave of relief washing over me.
Then, I saw Iris following Eleanor out of the room, completely naked.
I realized something important...
"Wait, Iris! Wear your clothes before going out!" I shouted, a hand already reaching to cover my face.
.....
....
"Alright, I get it. So... I'm a descendant of a guy who had a thousand wives and was an incredible wizard, and since mages strictly prohibit any human with magic potential from being alive if they're not part of the Mages Association..."
Victor summarized everything he had learned from the old man.
The headache was getting worse, and his hangover was stacked on top of it, making his head feel like it was about to explode.
"Why me?" he asked in disbelief, his voice tinged with a desperate hope.
"I don't even know magic. And shouldn't that guy have more descendants? After all, he had thousands of wives."
He held on to that thought, hoping for an easy way out of his predicament.
"Well, those descendants were indeed many," the old man said calmly, taking a slow sip of his tea.
"But not many had blood as rich and filled with mysticism as yours. And most of them died in the Great War years ago."
Victor's hope plummeted, crashing to the ground.
'Fuck the guy who wrote this shitty script, damn it!' he cursed in his mind.
He felt like fate was playing a cruel game with him, freeing him from one chain only to bind him to another one.
But he still had one last hope.
"By marrying into the family, that means I'll have to marry your granddaughter, right?" he asked.
"Is she that beautiful woman who kidnapped me?" He held his breath, hoping for a beautiful wife to make his forced marriage more palatable.
Hell, he'd even consider it a jackpot if she was pretty enough.
"Oh, you mean that lass? No, she's just a servant," the old man said dismissively.
"But yes, you will marry my granddaughter, Mariabell."
A bit disappointed, Victor still felt encouraged by a simple conclusion.
'If a servant was that beautiful, how much more beautiful would his granddaughter be?'
Just then, he heard the sound of footsteps.
"Grandpa, you called?" a sweet voice asked.
"Oh, she's here," the old man said, a wide smile on his face.
"Meet my sweet girl, Mariabell Faust."
The person who came down was floating just like him, and she was even wearing cute pajama.
Victor's brain paused.
She was beautiful, yes, overwhelmingly so.
More than any woman he had ever seen, minus Isabella, who always looked like a demon to him.
But then, the old man added, "Oh, I forgot to say, she's actually my great-granddaughter."
She was a freaking loli, damn it!