After the meeting, the pureblood nobles could still chat and laugh with the human representatives, while the mixed-bloods simply walked out.
"Next up is the vampire carnival. If they want to retaliate for us destroying the underground blood factory, this will be the day they act."
After the execution trial ended, Black Widow came over with a document and said.
The convicted pureblood's blood factory had been the most important blood supply source for Greater New York and the surrounding urban areas. Not only did he provide high-priced plasma, he also supplied huge quantities of cheap plasma—like male plasma from Black and Southeast Asian donors. That kind of plasma was far cheaper than the refrigerated blood the human government provided. A 100-milliliter unit cost just fifty dollars, making it the go-to food for many mixed-blood vampires who weren't well off.
In the vampire world, racial discrimination existed too—ridiculous but very real.
Ironically, it was precisely because his blood factory offered so much cheap plasma that timid and poor vampires had enough to eat without having to attack humans. In a sense, it even stabilized places like New York.
It was foreseeable that during this vacuum, with the blood factory gone and no new cheap food to replace it, the vampires in New York City would fall into a certain level of chaos. There could even be a spike in vampire attacks.
"Interesting. Is this a way of blaming me for disrupting that stability?"
Zod looked at the data sent from the U.S. government. Cases of vampires attacking civilians had been increasing day by day ever since the blood factory was destroyed. On top of that, vampires from all fifty states had been flocking to New York. This was the traditional vampire carnival, which normally would have been celebrated with huge quantities of blood prepared by the blood factory. But now the factory was gone, and Zod had confiscated the plasma—he wanted to check if there were any X-genes he hadn't yet acquired—leaving the gathered vampires with no food to celebrate.
"Tell them the Hellfront doesn't mind treating vampires like monsters. I don't care how many there are or how big the implications are. As long as they cross the line, not a single one will be spared," Zod said calmly.
Black Widow nodded. Unlike those high-level humans suspected of being vampire sympathizers, plenty of justice-driven officials among humanity had long been sick of sacrificing ordinary people just to maintain stability between humans and vampires.
"Are you really going to do this, Lawrence?"
Jesse, the top confidant of Lawrence Dane, the current leader of the mixed-blood vampires, stood in his office, his voice laced with unease.
"Jesse, the food from the Middle East won't arrive in the U.S. for another week. But today is already the holiday, and the factory has been destroyed."
Lawrence leaned back in his office chair, resting his chin on one hand.
"The supply of cheap plasma in New York City has been cut off for a week now. The Council has absolutely no intention of spending money to subsidize ordinary vampires who are short on funds."
"The human government's blood bank has raised prices again. With supply and demand growing more and more tense, a single bag of refrigerated plasma now costs 550 dollars."
"A lot of people have been starving for a week. A vampire weakened by hunger is no match for an ordinary human anymore."
"You know, Jesse, after everything that's happened, I finally understand exactly what these disgusting purebloods really are."
"They don't care about mixed-blood vampires like us. In name we're part of the empire, but we're forever being exploited by the purebloods."
Lawrence sighed. Having witnessed the Excalibur Bureau's trial and execution, and seeing the purebloods' sacrificial posturing, he realized the purebloods were utterly unreliable.
As Lawrence Dane's right hand, Jesse understood perfectly the predicament Lawrence was in right now. No matter which path he chose, it carried enormous risk for Lawrence as the leader of the mixed-blood vampires. The Council was blatantly using this incident to rein in the ever more influential Lawrence, and even to get rid of a portion of the mixed-blood vampires in the process.
Did those old bastards not understand who was holding this crumbling empire together?!
To make matters worse, the human side now had the formidable Excalibur Bureau, Zod Heath, and that whole group of superheroes.
In truth, in Lawrence's eyes, the greatest threat to vampires was Zod Heath, because he was a genius that surpassed centuries and worlds. He couldn't be certain that Zod Heath wouldn't one day develop something capable of killing all vampires.
Regrettably, even though Lawrence wanted to turn Zod Heath into a vampire as well, to make him one of their own, he could never find an opportunity. The beautiful female vampires he sent couldn't even get close to Zod Heath. He was either at the Excalibur Bureau headquarters, or at Umbrella Corporation headquarters, or simply vanished without a trace—often seen only in glimpses, his movements as elusive as a dragon showing its head but not its tail. What's more, Zod Heath himself was an extremely powerful superhero. Although he, like Iron Man Tony Stark, relied on technological equipment, his gear was a portable nanotech armor that could be carried at all times. Trying to take him by force was simply impossible.
The vampire sympathizers among high-level humans secretly told Lawrence that the human assessment of Zod Heath's nanotech armor—the Dark Knight—rated it as capable of single-handedly matching the combat power of ten armored mechanized divisions. In real combat, that armor had repeatedly demonstrated the ability to ignore tank shells, fly at speeds reaching Mach 10, display astonishing destructive force, and deploy an endless arsenal of high-tech weaponry.
If they tried brute force, Lawrence felt that even if he threw all the mixed-bloods at him, Zod Heath would just slaughter his way through.
The Hellfront task force and Excalibur Bureau agents all received Director Zod's orders: patrol on the day of the New York vampire carnival, and if they spotted any vampire attacking civilians, kill them on sight. He had also prepared plenty of high-powered ultraviolet searchlights. Even a pureblood vampire would be reduced to ash in a single second—a genuine anti-vampire superweapon.
After finishing these matters, Zod Heath turned his attention to the World Serpent affair. He officially renamed the World Serpent to "Burning Legion." At the same time, Zod Heath also produced the "Superman Serum."
Unlike the Superman pill from the Injustice comics, that one probably couldn't compare to Zod Heath's Superman Serum. Zod Heath's serum completely enhanced the human body, causing it to undergo unimaginable changes—a biotechnological product that could be called the Mount Everest of its field.
However, this Superman Serum had a very serious side effect: if the user didn't meet the requirements in even the slightest way, they would die.
/-\
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