SSS Awakening: Rebirth of the Strongest Vampire God novel Chapter 265

Chapter 265: How about you try to fight a little?

Ellora blinked. "Is... that thing sentient? Should we kill it before it multiplies?"

"No," Damon muttered. "That’s the quest giver."

Kaelthorn made a noise of disbelief. "That’s an alchemist?"

Riven squinted. "I’m pretty sure I saw that guy licking a mushroom in the alleyway last week."

Damon ignored them and stepped forward cautiously. "Old man."

The alchemist didn’t react.

Damon cleared his throat and tried again. "Master... It’s been a while. How are you doing?"

The old alchemist blinked slowly, as if rousing from some trance. His gaze dragged upward until it landed, barely, on Damon. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again like a rusty hinge remembering its purpose.

"Master," he echoed, almost reverently. "Yes... Yes, I was one once. Or perhaps I was three. The details are... alchemical." His gaze narrowed slightly, as if threading its way through the fog of fragmented memory. "You... I know you. You’re the blood-soaked one. The boy with a mouth full of questions."

Kaelthorn muttered, "Yup. Definitely licked a mushroom."

The alchemist ignored them all and suddenly sprang to his feet with surprising agility, sending a cloud of dust, feathers, and something that might have been a bat wing flying from his robes. "Did the first one speak to you? The book? Did it whisper? Bite? Did it bleed?"

"It was mostly unreadable," Damon awkwardly responded. "But I’ve got it. And I’m here for the second volume."

The alchemist grinned, revealing teeth stained with something suspiciously violet. "Good, good! Then the journal hasn’t rejected you. Yet. That’s promising. Or terrible. Could go either way."

He reached into his tattered sleeve and pulled out a bone key wrapped in dried roots. "Below this dungeon," he whispered. "A place that used to breathe. The corrupted lab. You’ll know it when you hear the souls wail."

Damon accepted the key, a little puzzled. He thought he would have to comb through a lot of dungeons to get here, but this old man simply handed over the key to him? What was going on?

"But be warned," the alchemist added, suddenly grave. "You’ll need to prove yourself to the lab. It remembers Ouroboros. It remembers failure. And it does not suffer pretenders."

"Sounds lovely," Damon muttered, pocketing the key.

The alchemist turned away, already lost in a new conversation with a beetle on his shoulder. Damon stepped back to the group.

"Well?" Ellora asked, brows arched.

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