Among the four noble lords...
Javier felt that the person most likely to be turned against Miranda, besides the inherent traitor Heisenberg, was Lady Dimitrescu.
This was because Donna Beneviento and Salvatore Moreau...
...were the incredibly loyal type who were difficult to persuade. That was why Javier sought out Lady Dimitrescu alone to convince her.
First, there was Donna Beneviento.
She lived in the Beneviento House within The Valley of the Mist.
Her family had made dolls for generations. Since childhood, she had been inferior and afraid to communicate with others due to a scar on her face.
Over time, she developed a mental illness,
specifically, what is known as depression.
She only spoke to Angie, a doll her father made for her. After her parents died in an accident, Mother Miranda took her in as an adopted daughter.
After being injected with the "gift" of e-mold, Donna gained the ability to manipulate hallucinogenic plants.
Her body was no different from an ordinary person's,
but she could secrete certain signaling substances to control plants infected by the mutated mold, much like the signals emitted by bees gathering nectar or the signaling substances used by ants to communicate.
At the same time, she could induce hallucinations in humans by having them inhale a certain type of pollen.
Therefore, Donna planted these hallucinogenic plants all around her Beneviento estate and shared a portion of her "gift" with Angie to achieve remote control of the doll.
Because of the adoption,
Donna, as Mother Miranda's adopted daughter, would not betray Mother Miranda out of both emotion and reason.
Because after her parents died,
Mother Miranda raised Donna and gave her the powers of the e-mold.
Unless Javier could find the cause of Donna's parents' death and maliciously frame Mother Miranda for it, she would be very difficult to turn.
As for the last one, Salvatore Moreau,
this hideous fish-monster was even harder. He was a Lord of the House of Moreau's council,
and the last member of his family. Like most people in the region, Salvatore was a fanatical follower of Mother Miranda.
During his service to Miranda, Salvatore was implanted with the gift and turned into a bizarre fish-like monster with an extremely grotesque appearance.
Because his compatibility with the gift was a failure, the other three lords wanted nothing to do with him, and Miranda thought the least of him.
Salvatore had almost completely lost his self-confidence.
He often lived in seclusion at the Moro Reservoir, unwilling to step outside.
However, he desperately wanted to prove his value to the other lords and please Mother Miranda, whom he viewed as his biological mother.
He was also a typical patient with a personality disorder,
possessing a masochistic or dependent personality. Due to his family's influence, Salvatore had been influenced by Mother Miranda's deeds since childhood and became a fanatical follower.
He treated Mother Miranda as a deity,
believing that serving her was a very sacred mission.
Furthermore, because the fusion with the "gift," the e-mold, was a failure,
he turned into a hideous fish-monster. This dealt a huge blow to Salvatore's self-confidence, leading to a deep sense of inferiority.
He was different from someone like Lady Dimitrescu; he didn't feel like he was special.
Instead, he felt he had barely gained Mother Miranda's favor through luck, believing his own aptitude was terrible.
He felt that if he didn't work hard, he could be abandoned at any time, so he worked desperately like a corporate slave, trying to win Mother Miranda's favor.
A guy like this...
...was even harder to turn than Donna, Mother Miranda's adopted daughter.
Because he had been a fanatical follower since childhood, coupled with his poor aptitude and inefficient work, he craved Mother Miranda's affection even more.
Even if Javier really succeeded in persuading him to defect,
at a critical moment, Mother Miranda would only need to crook her finger, and Salvatore would immediately change his mind. Thus, this kind of fence-sitter and traitor was the one most to be avoided.
So,
looking across the four noble lords...
...aside from Heisenberg, who was already a traitor in his own right,
Lady Dimitrescu was the best candidate to turn. She didn't have much of a debt of gratitude to Mother Miranda.
At most, Miranda had helped cure her illness.
One must know that the village's original Institute base was built with the help of Lady Dimitrescu's prestige and wealth.
Therefore, the relationship between the two was actually more of a simple master-servant dynamic.
It didn't involve too much extra emotion; she could be loyal or she could defect. It wasn't that rigid; there was a possibility of swaying her.
Especially after Javier told Lady Dimitrescu that she had once almost become the vessel sacrifice for Mother Miranda to resurrect her daughter,
this relationship became even worse.
After all, you injected the e-mold "gift" into me to treat my porphyria,
not to turn me into a vessel sacrifice for your daughter's resurrection. After clarifying the situation, the circumstances between the two were completely different.
At the same time,
Lady Dimitrescu was also a clever woman.
After hearing Javier's long explanation, she recalled many small details that perfectly filled in the gaps.
In addition, not long ago, Mother Miranda had indeed kidnapped and brought back a baby girl and performed a crystallization surgery on her.
She had divided that poor baby girl into four parts, placed them in flasks, and given one to each of the four noble lords for safekeeping.
She called it a ceremony in the name of beauty.
Even to ensure the smooth progress of the ceremony,
she spared no expense to release Lycans from outside the village to re-enter and pillage, which was the real reason for the rapid decrease in the village's population.
And now,
Lady Dimitrescu suddenly understood what this so-called ceremony was for.
It turned out Mother Miranda just wanted to use their hands to complete the ceremony to resurrect her own daughter.
Even when the time came to resurrect her daughter,
they, the so-called four noble lords, might even become funeral offerings. After all, if anything went wrong with the ceremony, they would be the best sacrifices.
And the hardest part to swallow was,
recalling the late 1980s in the 20th century when she was just cured by Mother Miranda,
Lady Dimitrescu, who had just returned to the village to inherit the position of lord, did remember a small overlooked matter.
That was, Mother Miranda indeed often complained in front of her about why her body had mutated so large.
Originally, before receiving the e-mold "gift,"
she had the height of a normal woman, but later mutated to 3.9 meters.
At the time, Lady Dimitrescu didn't understand and thought Mother Miranda was dissatisfied with her.
Thinking about it now,
it was because Miranda was worried the vessel for her daughter was too big and wouldn't fit well.
Her thoughts churning, Lady Dimitrescu's face did indeed darken slightly as she came back to her senses.
She couldn't refute Javier's words,
because what Javier said seemed to be the truth. She was just a pawn being used—!
"Let's put the matter of rebellion aside for a moment..."
"Mr. Javier, I want to hear your plan first. If we are really going to overthrow Mother's rule, what do you intend to do? After all, rebellion isn't just about talking. Let me see your preparations."
At the long dining table,
Lady Dimitrescu remained silent for a long time, ultimately not giving her answer immediately, but intending to hear Javier's plan first.
After all, as a servant,
she was very clear about Mother Miranda's terrifyingly powerful strength.
Without a meticulous and complete plan, even if they worked together from the inside and outside, they would hardly be a match for Mother Miranda.
So if the probability of rebellion was less than seventy percent,
Lady Dimitrescu would not accept Javier's proposal. After all, her lifelong wish was to live, not to go and die at Mother Miranda's hands.
To the side,
the three Vampire daughters, Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela, looked at the two as the atmosphere suddenly changed.
The three sisters looked confused and baffled because this was too strange.
Just a moment ago, they were about to fight, and now they had become calm and were even planning to betray Mother. The speed of this reversal was just too fast.
But no matter what,
they were Lady Dimitrescu's daughters and would only follow Lady Dimitrescu's orders.
As for Mother Miranda,
although she was an unquestionable and sacred existence,
if it was their mother's request and order, the three sisters would not hesitate to swing their blades in attack.
"My Lady, this is a very rational choice."
"I admire your mind more and more. You are a qualified mistress and a qualified head of the Dimitrescu Family."
"However, since I've brought up this plan, I naturally have my own arrangements and preparations. The baby girl's limb sample that Mother Miranda had you keep for safekeeping—her real name is actually Rosemary Winters."
"She also has a father named Ethan Winters. Mother Miranda has enraged a lion who loves his daughter. In the coming days, Rose's father, Ethan, will arrive in the village to find his daughter, and then Ethan might be captured by Mother Miranda."
"Then you four noble lords will be summoned for a meeting. I need you to take me with you, My Lady. As for my identity, the status of a husband or son-in-law of the Dimitrescu Family would likely not hold up."
"So you can just say that the castle is lacking live human blood and that I am a human trafficker responsible for selling slaves. As for the excuse for bringing me to the meeting,"
"My Lady, you just continue to say that you didn't dare to act on your own and wanted to ask for Mother's opinion, and only dared to privately accept the sold human blood after she permitted it."
"And once I've obtained Mother Miranda's permission, I can let the other three noble lords know my identity, allowing me to move freely in the village. Then, in the name of a slave Merchant, I will have detailed talks with the other three lords."
"And I will continue to entice them to join the rebellion. I can guarantee you, My Lady, that I can get at least one other lord to join the rebel ranks. Two great lords, plus myself and Ethan, two Outsiders."
"As long as you launch a sneak attack at the critical moment of the ceremony, that will already be enough of a probability to defeat Mother Miranda. This is my rough plan. My Lady, you can start considering your choice and decision..."
"Of course... I'm not coming empty-handed. Besides a meticulous plan, I also have corresponding payment I can offer, and this payment can also enhance your power, Lady Dimitrescu."
"I've heard that although you are not a true Vampire, you still need to drink blood to maintain your life and abilities."
"And in my hand... I happen to have a bottle of extraordinary blood, more delicious and lethal than any sanguis virginis wine you've ever tasted—!"
Knowing Lady Dimitrescu's concerns,
it was nothing more than fear that the plan would fail, and she would end up worse off than before.
So Javier didn't keep her in suspense and laid out his entire plan, which could be said to be full of sincerity.
And Javier's follow-up plan was also very simple, which was to go to the Iron Factory and persuade Heisenberg to join the alliance.
Lady Dimitrescu plus Heisenberg,
the two of them were the top two strongest combatants among the four noble lords.
One was a Dragon Incarnation, and the other was a transformer. A sneak attack on Mother Miranda at the critical moment of the ceremony would be enough to give her a hard time.
Actually, in the original timeline,
Heisenberg had invited Ethan to form an alliance with him to fight Mother Miranda together.
Heisenberg's goal was to overthrow Mother Miranda's rule, while Ethan's goal was to obtain his daughter Rose's crystallized limbs. The two goals did not conflict.