Chapter 504: The Rejected

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Clementine looked at her last combatants before the fight with her against Frank. She had some faith in these two clowns despite their looks and how they acted.

They were rather strong despite all of this, and even when Bernard was not allowed to kill, he had the power to end the two girls quickly most likely if they lowered their guard.

However, they were also mysterious. What mysterious could these two strange-looking Vampires hide within their past? Frank couldn't help but wonder this a little bit. every Vampire always had long live and turbulent pasts. No Vampire ever had a past of peace, they were always involved in tragedies, as if the requirement to become a Vampire was suffering in life…

And perhaps, that was the reason they're chosen, after all nobody is going around asking common folk if they want to become Vampires, Clementine and her father had only given such a privilege to those THEY choose.

Out of pity, perhaps, or because they see potential in those that had gone through a lot of suffering and had still survived and gone through all of it. Those with strong resolves and powerful convictions who were able to fight back against the tragedies of life, or perhaps, just resiliently keep going, even with all the pain and the weights they held within their shoulders.

These two particular and cartoony men were the same, their turbulent pasts defined them as persons now, the opportunity to become Vampires came to their life when all things they loved were lost. Perhaps… this was also a requisite to become a Vampire.

Albert Bon Fullhall VI was a man of many secrets and a past he often disliked recalling… behind his masquerade as a gentleman and a particularly insane assassin, there was a fragile man that had been heart broken many times through his life. A man that had crawled through life in the worst possible treatments.

Despite being born 300 years ago around the 1700's in a royal family in England, Albert did not had a pleasurable life of commodities.

His upbringing was painful to his mother, to the point that she died quickly after giving birth to him, breaking the heart of his father who loved his wife to the point of obsession. And he, who was born strange, with skinny body, where his bones could be seen below his thin skin, long ears, and a beak-like nose with slightly bluish skin wasn't taken kindly.

Blamed by his father and family for having killed his mother even when he was mere baby who didn't knew anything of the world he was born in, Albert was named by his grandmother who was the only one that decided to take care of him aside from his servants.

His father never came to see him through his childhood, and the boy grew sickly and always with fevers and other diseases affecting his sickly body, but he always pulled through as his grandmother used the funds of their wealthy family to buy the best medicines she could pay for, even going as far as consulting a witch friend for potions to heal her sickly grandson, the child of her daughter who was rejected by his family for being called "an abomination who killed his mother"…

He grew with only his grandma, two butlers, and an old maid. They were al the family he ever had as he grew confined in the fortress-like house his grandma had, where she was abandoned by the husband of her daughter.

She only had one daughter, so seeing this boy being abandoned by his own father broke her heart. Despite his appearance, the boy was a cute and innocent child, and she couldn't possibly let him grow alone and die alone.

She helped Bernard grow big, even as sickly, and skinny as he looked. She always taught him to respect others and to not have complexes due to his appearance and how different he was from other people. However, as the boy grew most of his childhood in closed doors, he could only look from the windows at the outside world wondering how it could be to paly around with the children and have nice time with them.

His grandmother always told him that the outside world was dangerous. She had grown sick of the outside and she grew weaker as she grew older. She disliked most people as she thought of them as greedy and cold-hearted bastards, and didn't wanted Bernard to meet the world outside as she feared that he would be attacked by others due to being of a wealthy family, even risking the possibility of being kidnapped due to this…

But he did not listen. At the age of 7 he had enough of being confined in the house, and one day he managed to sneak out using the keys left behind by his grand while she slept over her cushion.

He escaped the house and wandered around the large garden, meeting the gardeners and other servants from the nearby houses of the territory, who all looked at him with horror, although they pretended to smile and wave their hand to their young lord. Even if he was discriminated by the family, he still had the authority of a lord over them all.

Of course, it wasn't the same in the outside.

Many of the servants had tried to stop him but he ordered them to not intervene, as he walked outside the house territory and flew around the outside streets of London, wandering around aimlessly as the people passing by looked at him terrified of his appearance that seemed straight out of a fantasy book.

However, it wasn't until he finally met kids that he could properly interact with others, meeting a group of kids playing in the nearby plaza, he saw them playing the ball, and flew to join them.

"Hey! Can I play the ball with you guys?"

However, when he approached them, they immediately looked at him with horror, the girls even screamed at his appearance, and the boys insulted him.

"W-Who are you?!"

"Is he really like that?"

"W-What…"

"Uwah! He's so ugly!"

"G-Get away from us!"

"…Eh?"

And that's the first time he met the harsh world outside.

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