Ascendant Path of a Lustful Vampire Chapter 653: Isn’t this the part…?

Athenodora was suspended a few inches above the ground, her eyes still wide open and the whites still blood red just like her pupils. She was gritting her teeth as though in distress but other than that, she didn’t move. Her arms and feet just pointed at the ground while her back remained arched at an impossible angle.

Caius frowned as he watched her but there was nothing he could do about it besides wait. Athenodora was right when she said he didn’t want her to die. While he never knew exactly what the Blood Matrix could do because it was never made clear in the original canon, Caius still subscribed to the idea that it could heal the curse even if he didn’t know exactly how.

That said, he was not at all selfless enough to allow anyone else to lay claim to the Blood besides him. So the goal from the start had always been to get the blood and then use it to heal Athenodora if it could.

If there was one thing that he just knew instinctively since he got the Blood, it was that, as a Matrix, the Blood wasn’t actually a physical thing that could be collected and experimented with. Yes, Caius could draw the traits within the Matrix into his blood but that was a temporary thing that wouldn’t remain long enough for any experiments or cure engineering.

What proved this fact was how every body part that had been ripped or cut off from his body, including the blood within them had flaked into nothingness eventually.

The only way Athenodora could get some kind of cure from the Matrix was for Caius to feed her directly.

Minutes passed with Athenodora in her suspended state and Caius spent the time cross-legged with his eyes closed as he delved back into the Helix.

The Helix was the culmination of Viktor’s mad genius and while the composition was complicated, it held all Caius needed to know about how the Matrix came to be. Sure, he didn’t have a multitude of minds in his head to fragment his mental state and boost his understanding to unfathomable levels, but at least, he was getting by.

The most glaring thing to Caius was that the Blood Matrix had a weakness. It was that weakness that Aurelius had exploited in the original canon to destroy the Blood which was where Caius had gotten the idea on how to cheat Viktor’s enchantments; Divine Energy/Power.

It was amusing that despite all his talks about overthrowing Divine Order, Viktor never safeguarded his masterpiece against being undone by Divine power.

Of course, as impressive as the Blood Matrix was, it was still a mortal invention. Its regenerative trait was impressive on mortal standards. To a god, however, it was nothing. Because gods, the True gods anyway, have true immortality. They are tied to Order, a primordial concept that will exist unless it is completely destroyed by Chaos, its only equal.

True gods can be defeated. They can have their essence and domain completely ripped apart and be inert for hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of years but they are never truly gone. Eventually, if Order persists, they will return in some form.

Compared to that, Caius’s regeneration could be undone.

And that was why the Blood Matrix was ultimately just a starting point for Viktor’s ambition and not the end of it.

Caius had an idea to correct the most glaring weakness of the Blood Matrix by introducing Divinity into the empty sequence of the Helix. Essentially, he was thinking of bringing his Divine energy and the Blood Matrix together in a synthesis to create something new. Something better.

Alas, it wasn’t as easy as pulling the two together.

The major barrier was that the Divine energy, unlike the Blood Matrix, occupied a physical space. The Divine seed that produced it was within Caius’s vampiric Blood.

The Blood Matrix, however exists outside the physical plane. It exists in a metaphysical plane where it has collated data that amounts to everything that makes up Caius’s physical body.

That was the basis of the regenerative healing;

Whenever Caius lost a body part or was injured in some way, the Blood Matrix would call on the data it had collated and stored, and with that, it would identify that Caius’s body was in an unnatural state and then use the stored data as a framework on which to build a replacement or heal what was lost/damaged.

In other words, the Blood Matrix was why Caius’s cut-off hand and dislodged heart weren’t regenerated backward or in a deformed state.

Anyway, since the Blood Matrix and the Divine Seed/Energy exist on separate planes, bringing them together wasn’t at all straightforward.

After trying and failing, Caius turned his attention to the complicated and ingenious make-up of the Blood Matrix, realizing he would have to understand it beyond surface level. Only then could he reengineer it enough to make the alterations and improvements he wanted. And that included filling the empty sequences of the Helix.

With a sigh, Caius opened his eyes slowly.

He would be mad to be disappointed. He had acquired something incredible, changed the course of the narrative drastically. He should take pride in that. Alas, there was still the problem of the Editors. He needed to remain ahead of them and that made him impatient and paranoid.

He couldn’t help but dwell on what they could do to get at him now that the new agreement designating this as its own canon essentially gave them the leeway to make his life hell.

’Maybe they won’t see the need,’ Caius thought but he knew that was wishful thinking.

"Ack!"

Athenodora was moving again for the first time in minutes. Veins popped all along her limbs and she turned her head very hard to the side, gave one last groan, and then fell to the ground.

Caius watched as the blood cracks and protruding veins on her body began to recede until her skin was as perfect as always. Athenodora pressed a hand to the ground and hoisted herself into a sitting position.

"That was..." She seemed to struggle for the right word.

"Exhilarating?" Caius supplied.

"Horrible!" Athenodora corrected.

Caius’s blood had run through her like acid, eating away at every bit of her insides only to mend whatever damage it had caused and do it all over again. It took a while amidst the debilitating pain for Athenodora to realize that whenever the blood ate away at her, it was consuming a part that had been diseased by the curse so whenever it healed the damage caused, it also wiped traces of the curse’s damage.

It was as though the curse had become so much of a part of Athenodora’s being that she needed to be renewed entirely to be freed of it. Even now, despite nothing about her, inside and out, appearing different, Athenodora felt like she was new. Like she had undergone some kind of rebirth.

"So," Caius asked, "Did it work?"

An aura exploded from Athenodora’s form, rocking through limbo. It wasn’t a dimension-rending power of the Twelfth Circle and yet, limbo trembled at the feeling of it.

Caius was smacked by the wave and had to really work hard to ground himself and even then, he slid away, trying to peer through the pressure blasting against his face so he could see Athenodora in her true glory.

Blood was revolving around Athenodora as she flexed her unique element with a fluidity she had lacked for months because of the curse. Everything she did was like someone who had been on a long fast and could not wait to gorge themselves on food.

No longer did she have to reach for reserves she painstakingly stored away and could now let loose from her immense reserves of magical power that had been greatly lessened because of the curse.

Athenodora’s eyes were closed and her smile was indulgent. Merry. Delighted.

Another violent wave of energy slammed Caius in the midsection sweeping his legs so he fell face first onto the ground, breaking his nose. It healed almost immediately but Caius wasn’t even paying that any mind as he tried to dig his fingers into the ground to keep from sliding away even more.

Fingers were failing so Caius shifted, so he could dig into the ground with his claws. Alas, even then he continued to slide away.

And then, the torrent of magical expression began to wane as Athenodora reined in her magic, still with an indulgent smile on her face.

Athenodora opened her eyes. Like the rest of her, they were back to normal; White sclera with blood-red pupils.

"Your blood is working itself out of me. In a second or two, I’ll no longer feel it. But, it left something behind. Something that isn’t going away.

I wonder what it is."

Athenodora was clearly talking to Caius. And yet, her voice was so low that she may as well have been talking to herself.

And then she looked around and spotted Caius where he was lying, breathing fairly hard, his claws still dug into the ground.

"What are you doing way over there?" She asked in a falsely surprised voice.

Caius rolled his eyes but had barely started the rotation when Athenodora was suddenly in front of him, grabbing his chin with her thumb and index fingers, lifting his head so he was looking up at her.

"So the dashing Lord has saved the damsel," Athenodora said as her perfect lips formed a smirk,

"Isn’t this the part where they kiss and live happily ever after?"