After spending most of the night fiddling around roofs and alleyways, mostly dark and lonely ones, Aldritch had gotten a good grasp of his new skills, at least, body transformation. As for his new 'shapeshifting' skill, Aldritch was still in practice. At the moment, he was in his bat form, which happened to be the only animal he could shapeshift into.
Flying was a difficult thing to master at first, but after several hours, Aldritch seemed to be getting the hang of it. His 'practice' had brought him to dawn as the morning was quickly fast approaching. The sky was already brightening up, so Aldritch flew into a lonesome alley, crash landing on the ground as he attempted landing, unfortunately, his technique still left much to be desired.
Once on the ground, he transformed back into his normal self, his bat wings expanding inordinately as he changed back to normal in mere seconds. If anything, the fact that the transformation did not affect his clothes had to be the best part. From the looks of things, it felt more magical than physiological when he shapeshifted.
As the process was seamless and without pain or discomfort, Aldritch had no complains.
"Heh, I think that's it for me, I can't fly back like that, I'd only crash like I did... gotta protect my image when I can!" He cheered himself on as he left the alleyway.
If he had to guess, it was already several minutes past six. He could afford to find such a dead looking alley because he was around the business area, and because it was still early, even then, it didn't mean the early risers were nonexistent.
Once Aldritch entered the wide street, he found quite a few people about, some were stretching lightly, some yawning while just standing around, others seemed busy already, walking about. Out of the few people on the street, at least compared to the afternoon time, they were, Aldritch was drawn to one in particular.
'Well, never thought I'd run into 'my' brother here.' He thought to himself.
He was a bit surprised to see his brother, but only for about a second.
Aldritch saw no reason to approach and introduce himself, after all, compared to Lance, he was a completely different person, from looks to body stature to the soul possessing the body. Even though he awakened in Lance's body, what followed was a kind of body reconstruction.
"Why the hard face? If I didn't know better, I'd think you to be a hard cold killer." Aldritch said as he walked side by side to Marcus who was taken aback by the stranger beside him.
Doing a quick take, he found Aldritch to be a very handsome young man that many females would die for, and his dress seemed to be intentionally dulled not to drag attention to himself so much, especially with his looks. Marcus immediately adopted a friendly smile as he looked at Aldritch, "I am a mercenary after all, how else could I look?" He said with a light tone and a chuckle.
Looking at him, Aldritch could tell what his profession was just from how he was dressed. Even though he didn't want to involve himself with his brother, he felt there was some responsibility to assist that he had tied to Marcus.
Letting things play out as intended, Aldritch made his way back to the mansion, soon shedding off the thoughts.
Day was already fast approaching, and though Aldritch felt like he could still stay up without any hitch, he decided to sleep for a short time before focusing on sharpening his skills further for what was to come.
.net
The plan to create a monster invasion was already under work, and it would happen soon. Now, his first step from then was to evolve his closest family, then further, and after that, he was going to visit a few places that Lada had been dutifully researching and marking.
The plan was easy, with the Argus family secured, the next target were other witches of the Lunar Cult. They were the main reason why Lada was in the capital for all these years after all, he could imagine the amount of forces they had. Fortunately, he didn't need to imagine or operate based on assumptions, as he had Lada with him to provide clarity on such cases.
According to Lada, the Lunar Cult's main reason for taking over the kingdom was so they could use it people as manpower to conquer other kingdoms so they could conduct a mass ritual to revive the great mother.
The goal was simple, but Aldritch doubted the part stating that they would conquer so many kingdoms with all their military, even though the two closest to the Bamana Kingdom were also in similar situations with Bamana, having diminished military forces.
Whether or not the cult planned to conquer neighbouring kingdoms first or conduct the ritual using the people of the Bamana kingdom, Aldritch didn't care, he planned to just take over the entire cult before then. Any other person who came in his way would naturally be flattened or fall in line.
Taking over the kingdom now served more than just a sense of accomplishment, it also would pave a way for their transverse to the higher world, which Aldritch was now rather passionate about since he didn't want to disappear.
...
For the following two weeks, Aldritch spent his time training for the most part, honing his skills while perfecting his skills.
With enough BP to evolve all his closest subordinates, Aldritch called them all into the underground space for the process to begin.
Lina, Ingrid, Khal, and Lada were the only ones being evolved, the other person was supposed to be Ralwa, but she was away at that moment.
After this evolution, all of them would become Blooded Vampires, the same rank as Aldritch a few weeks ago. He was really curious as to how it would turn out, whether they would gain new skills, and what kind of skills it would be. Apart from that, he was really curious about how much their strength would increase.