I Am Louis XIV

   Chapter 493 The King's Third Royal Expedition (3)

   This is not a ruby, nor is it red fluff or scales, but the hot blood of human beings is congealing in the belly of the bug.

When the duke realized this, those moths had already taken off, leaving behind a pale human body, which rushed towards the duke. What they did not expect was that the duke did not flee in a hurry like ordinary humans, leaving behind An unsuspecting spine to the enemy. Instead of retreating, he advanced, held his breath, and rushed towards the moth swarm. Countless sparks of scale powder fell on his bare skin, causing a sharp pain like a needle.

It was only a matter of a second. The Duke rushed towards the dead guard and grabbed the musket he was holding tightly in his hand. As soon as he got it, he fired it into the sky, only to hear a "bump", and the thick chaotic fog seemed to be here. It was torn to shreds in an instant, and the moths gathered behind him, gradually turning from a grayish-white shadow into a thin and beautiful young man. He screamed—like the high-frequency buzzing of a moth, his body swayed slightly, as if a film had been cut off in the middle, and he came to the Duke like lightning.

He showed malice in his eyes, raised his lips, and showed his fangs. No matter what position the Duke of Orleans has among mortals, what knowledge and courage he has, or how respected he is, to the vampires, he is still just a delicacy. dinner.

The Duke stood motionless, as if he had lost the strength and thought to resist because of fear. This is very common among ordinary people. Sometimes they can't even make a sound, but when this young-looking vampire wants to catch When he was the Duke, he was confronted by a furious black shadow.

  ————

  Theodoric was sitting on the terrace of the poop, admiring the boundless silver sea when the accident happened.

At first, the thick fog did not attract his attention. At sea, there will be fog in the morning and at night, sometimes big, sometimes small, but then he heard someone on the lookout shouting, "Ghost ship! Ghost ship! !"

Ghost ships, people say are those sailors who unfortunately lost their lives in marine accidents, the owners and passengers, because they are not willing to accept such a tragic fate, at some point - in a hurricane, rain or fog, they drive the mast to collapse , ships with ragged canvases and battered hulls and decks are slowly approaching the world of the living, like storms and reefs taking away their souls. They also take the souls of those who meet them and make them part of a ghost ship.

But for people in the inner world, most of these ghost ships are the masterpieces of wizards, just like Gayola Island, Gayola Island can be self-sufficient to a certain extent, but there are some things that they cannot produce, Therefore, they still often have to contact and trade with the outside world. In order to ensure that the curtain separating the inner and outer worlds is not broken, they use corpses or puppets to control ships. Occasionally, these ships will be discovered by mortals, and they think they are masterpieces of ghosts.

In fact, the ghosts of mortals are not as strong and stable as they think. Some ghosts will forget their past, and some ghosts will gradually dissipate over time, and can touch mortal things, make sounds, or confront life. Human-influenced ghosts are rare, and must have been extraordinary in their lifetime - to put it simply, when you hear of a ghost wandering somewhere, it's rarely a peasant, or a maid, but Kings and concubines, important officials and dignitaries, at least a lord or general, are qualified to stay in the world for a long time.

If it was just a ghost ship, Theodoric's incarnation of the cat wouldn't care too much, but he jumped off the terrace immediately, and just as he was about to jump into the porthole of the captain's cabin in the poop, the cat's round pupil suddenly Shrinking into a thin line - that ghost ship...

   is about to hit!

The boats were full of seasoned sailors, chanting God bless and clutching at everything around them, their eyes reflecting the ghost ship's head, a beautiful, plump goddess, peeling gilt and color, though With a solemn expression, a red lacquer lip was strangely widened, a slender tongue sticking out of his fangs - what a terrifying and twisted smile!

Everyone was waiting for the earth-shattering impact, but no, after a few seconds someone looked up suspiciously, and what made him shiver was that he saw the cocked stern of the ghost ship sinking into their big sails, the ghost ship from Their boat passed through like a dull mist.

The cat fell on the floor of the captain's room at once, and he knew at a glance that there were a lot of things missing in this suddenly enlarged room... The tub, the bed, the door, and the Duke of Orleans, when he heard rumors outside There were shouts of dread, and he jumped out of the room and saw that the mast, the sail, the cable had missing parts, in a strange way, because nothing seemed to be cut or burnt. The resulting defect seems to be the original, if I have to describe it, it is like a complete oil painting that was partially wiped off with dry bread.

The cat boy immediately turned to the direction where the ghost ship disappeared, but he could only see the thick fog, his heart was occupied by the rare restlessness, and he couldn't help but scratched several deep marks on the deck - a group of sailors ran past him, Although they encountered such a thing, there were more urgent problems waiting for them to deal with - the oars and hull plates also disappeared, and they faced the danger of sinking after losing power.

   At this moment, the gunshots sounded, and the cat's eyes lit up, and he jumped onto the side of the ship, and then jumped to the sea covered by the dense fog.

   Only one of the crew saw, but he did not know the identity of Theoderic, who even thought it was a devil, and after a hastily shouted the name of a saint, he was driven to re-raise the sails.

  ———

   The blue-gray cat began to elongate in the thick fog and landed—when it landed on the ghost ship, it had turned into a blue-black cheetah, vigorous and fierce.

If the captain of the Escudo is here, he will be shocked to find that this ghost ship is like the twin brother of the Escudo, no, it should be said, like a skeleton with the help of Escudo The flesh and blood of No.

This rotten ship, when passing through the Escudo, in addition to their prey, also took away part of the Escudo's board, mast and canvas, as well as something similar to a wooden barrel, Cables and the like, generally unfortunate to be around those humans.

The meager smell of blood was quickly dissipating in the humid sea breeze, but Theodoric smelled it and knew that it was the smell left by the vampires after eating. There's very little blood in the air when they eat - there's a lot of misunderstandings about vampires, but one thing is right, they kiss their prey after eating. Where it was bitten, let it heal quickly and leave no marks.

However, it also depends on the situation and the race. For example, the blood races such as Fandro and Torredo who live in the city and communicate frequently with humans, they not only eat well, but keep their whereabouts secret, and they rarely cause death, because people If they are still alive, the poor will become weak because they are only malnourished, and the rich will think that they are excessive bloodletting, and will not suspect that they have encountered a vampire, but if a person dies, those who are not affected by anyone The poor who care about it are okay, those who have identities, surnames and assets are hard to say.

Races such as Gangaro and Nophele, although they are also members of the secret, swear to avoid the world, but their prey usually only has one death, so they rarely hide the cone holes left after blood sucking. After all, when the flesh and blood rotted away, leaving nothing but bones, even the wise Solomon crawled out of hell, he might not be able to see the truth.

   Not to mention the Sabbat members who never cover their tracks.

   There is also a situation where the vampires will do whatever they want when they decide that the prey cannot escape and cannot leave a complete corpse - for example, at sea.

  The vampires don’t like the sea very much, but sometimes, they also hold banquets on islands and ships, a bloody, gluttonous banquet, and there is absolutely no possibility for the humans to escape at the banquet. In addition to the Giovanni family (neutral clan), there is only Makavi who often hold such banquets.

The reason why the Giovanni family held sea banquets is because Giovanni's ancestral land is Italy. Although the Italian peninsula is divided, no one can deny that their merchants have accumulated a lot of wealth by relying on maritime trade. Long vampires rarely leave their territories to develop their descendants elsewhere - we're not going to mention Prince Amon, the head of the mad Zmish clan here, so members of the Giovanni clan sometimes revisit their hobbies as human beings -navigation.

  Mokawi's ancestral land is in Toledo. Their members rarely set foot in the ocean in the earliest days, but as Spain became the lord of the sea, the blood clan gradually extended the tentacles of power to the blue outer sea - this is just like what Amon complained about, the inner world The boundaries of the world will also change with the changes of the world, unless the king of the world has no blood in the original territory and land, and the blood of the newly occupied land may reach an agreement with the new mortal king.

   "Mokawi," said Theoderic.

The blood clan can be transformed into black mist and bats. This is a fact that people are familiar with, but the elders and parents of each clan also have a third ability to change, just like what Theoderic and Amon did. In that way, they can transform into the common black bat and black mist, or they can decompose part of their body and strength - into a third kind of creature. Theoderic is the cat and Amon is another little bat.

  Merkawi is a moth.

As soon as he saw the moths, Theoderic knew that it was the Mokawi clan. He tore the young vampire with one claws, and the latter split into countless small moths with hissing screams. , they sometimes coalesce and sometimes disperse in the air, as if trying to reunite with no success.

The Duke of Orleans watched them, and Theoderic glanced at him. The skin on the Duke's arms, shoulders, and back had turned from pearly white to a terrifying crimson. Breathing fairly well, he seems to have deftly avoided inhaling the powder that fell from the moth's wings as he fled - if that's the case, things are about to get tricky.

Theodoric stretched out his tail and wrapped his tail around the Duke's ankles, pulling him to his side, and the Duke was holding the cat's back—no, the cheetah's back, he was sore and exhausted that he wanted to sit down or lay down at once to rest, But he couldn't even put his weight on the prince—the cheetahs' backs were tense, and their enemy might not have appeared yet.

The moths were still rolling and "screaming", and the duke wasn't sure if the noises were coming from the moths' mouthparts or the vibration of their wings, but he seemed to hear something similar to the Spanish The pronunciation of "father", the body under his palm moved slightly, the Duke raised his head, and saw a large thick fog pouring down towards the deck, and then he realized that it was not fog, but a large group of moths.

This may be the largest and most beautiful moth the Duke of Orleans has ever seen. They even look like butterflies, with thin bodies, broad wings, and long tails that are almost twice as long as their wings. It is an extremely holy milky white, and the end exudes a moving blue-blue light, just like the starlight flashing in the mist, with an indescribable charm.

   "Prince Uriel," Theoderic said, nodding slightly.

"Prince Theoderic." There was a human voice in the moth group, and then the new moth group suddenly converged into a slender form, and a vampire in a white coat came out, he raised the cloak of the same color , caught the group of gray-black moths that were still rambling, "Look," he said with a little reproach: "As a prince, you shouldn't treat a descendant of the same class so harshly."

   "I didn't know he was your descendant," Theoderic said. "And he was trying to hurt my ward."

Uriel put down his cloak, the young vampire finally regained his full form, but he still looked very bad - like those vampires controlled by the king, when they were unable to eat for a long time or were seriously injured, The vampire would be like a skeleton—he knelt at Uriel's feet, not daring to move or make a sound.

The Duke of Orleans stared at each other boldly and curiously, because he had such an elder brother. As a younger brother, he also knew a lot about the world. Prince Theoderic and Prince Amon were the two blood clans he saw most often. His appearance is absolutely not commensurate with his age. Prince Theoderic's age is equivalent to the age of his "death", that is, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, with a stern and noble face; as for Amon, From the appearance, it is just a young man between a teenager and a youth, and the hidden madness is often mistaken for innocence or naughty.

Makarvi's parents have the same name as the archangel, and from the outside, he is enough to be solidified on the wooden board by the painter in the name of an angel, with half-length silver hair covering his shoulders, and a pair of cobalt blue eyes, they gleam. The light is still brilliant even in dim light.

   I'm sorry, I originally asked for a day off to change the furniture - the stupid author overestimated himself - the wardrobe is so... heavy!

   The author who thought he was very strong - just stretched out his little hand to try, and then, the muscle strained...

   Bow and apologize!

   There will be no notice here, I always feel that the flag will be planted...

   (end of this chapter)