After Taken as a Prisoner of War, the Vampire Queen Turned Me Into a Vampire and Made Me Her Daughter-Chapter 256: Second Floor

Despite his hazy vision, Gordon could see a figure standing outside his room, peeking at him through the door gap.

Fully conscious and acutely aware of the changes happening around him, he found himself incapable of controlling his body, as if some invisible force was pressing down on him.

He could feel the figure outside shifting; It was slowly beginning to move.

One moment, it was watching him from outside. Now, it was standing right past the doorway in his room. A chill ran down his spine; the door showed no signs of being open – How had it gotten inside?

The darkness restricted Gordon’s vision, making it impossible for him to clearly make out the person’s features. He could only vaguely make out a human figure, short and frail, like an old man nearing the end of his life.

Judging by their build, it was obvious that the visitor was not one of the three other people in the apartment, but rather, someone completely unknown.

‘A break-in?’

As the thought flashed through his mind, Gordon tried to move, but his body remained completely unresponsive to his commands.

Was he bound by some spellcraft or sorcery? Why did he not sense any trace of it?

Without Gordon noticing, the dark figure had moved from the doorway and was now standing beside the bathroom.

Still, he did not lose his cool and instead snuck a glance at the starfire sword resting on the table. Then, feigning sleep, he began to pour all his willpower into moving his stiff fingers.

Gradually, he regained control of four of them — only his pinky remained numb.

An icy breeze brushed across his sweat-soaked back. It felt as if something was clinging to him, trailing its chilly fingers down his back.

The dark figure was now standing right next to his bed.

He squeezed his eyes shut; Just a little more, and he would wrest his arm free from its stiffness.

The same cold air whipped across his face, this time like an invisible hand reaching out for him.

Sensing the situation could send him teetering down a knife’s edge at any moment, Gordon’s eyes flew open. He grabbed his sword from the bedside table and in a swift motion, sent a shower of sparks streaking across the pitch-black room.

The shadow flinched. At that instant, the world around Gordon seemed to fracture. Cracks spread across his vision like a spiderweb, shattering into countless fragments.

He was jolted awake once more, only this time to be greeted by reality. Eyes wide open, he shot up in bed, gasping for air as he frantically looked around the room.

Everything was just as it had been before he fell asleep. Yet the cold starfire sword in his arms and the slightly ajar door constantly gnawed at him, making him wonder if that dream had been real all along.

If the gap had not been wide enough to show him lying in bed, he might still be able to dismiss it all as his imagination.

But…

Gordon’s gaze shifted to the ajar door, which was wide enough to reveal a small section of the hallway — and for anyone outside to have an equally clear view of him.

Just like in his dream.

The cool sweat on his back, and the faint sparks dancing along the engravings of his Starfire sword, seemed to fill him with a sense of impending danger.

His intuition was telling him that the dream earlier was anything but ordinary.

“Thud, thud, thud.” The sound of footsteps echoed down the first-floor corridor, snapping Gordon out of his thoughts.

They were coming from the other end of the building, headed straight in his direction.

Gordon slipped back into bed, pulling the blanket back over himself. His eyes narrowed in concentration as he monitored the situation outside through the narrow opening in his door.

Perhaps that old geezer Bohlman had gotten some ideas after seeing their valuables and was trying to steal them away under the cover of night.

The idea seemed incredibly likely to him, when he considered the odd personality of the old man and the apartment’s remote location; It was miles away from human civilization, making it the perfect place to strike unseen.

He silently tightened his grip around his weapon.

“Thud, thud, thud…” The footsteps stopped right outside his door. With his view obscured, Gordon could not make out the appearance of his ‘visitor’. All he saw was a dark figure whooshing past the door, followed by hurried footsteps as it raced up the stairs to the second floor.

Strangely, they ceased abruptly on the second floor. The being appeared to stop at the top of the stairs, causing silence to fall over the area once more.

Gordon waited under his blanket for a few minutes, but no sound came.

‘Gone? Just like that, without doing anything at all? What’s the point of him patrolling the apartment in the dead of night then?’

Gordon suddenly realized he had overlooked something important.

Bohlmann’s room was in a different section of the building; If the footsteps had been the old man’s, they would not have echoed from this hallway, let alone pass by his door.

‘Who could it be?’

With the uncannily vivid dream that made him question his senses still fresh in his mind- Gordon cast off his blankets. He put on his shoes, and with his Starfire Sword tightly in hand, quietly pushed the door open.

With the lamps hanging off the walls extinguished, the hallway was in darkness. Only the dim moonlight streamed through the window, bathing the windowsill in its glow.

Though his eyes had mostly adjusted to the darkness, a thick cloud of black dust obscured the stairway, preventing him from seeing further than five meters in that direction. He had a vague feeling that something was lurking around the corner.

After surveying his surroundings, Gordon tiptoed out of his room and peered down the hallway towards the lobby.

It was pitch-black and utterly silent, as if everything that happened earlier had just been a figment of his imagination.

He closed the door, wedging a few strands of hair into the keyhole; if someone were to enter his room while he was away, they would shift and alert him.

Gordon kept a hand on the wall as he rounded the corner and reached the stairs to the second floor. The stairwell was deserted, but as he gripped the handrail, he was struck by its rough texture and the strange, unpleasant odor it emitted, probably the result of many years of disrepair.

With his sword in hand, he slowly made his way up the stairs.

The layout of the second floor mirrored the first, with rooms being in near identical locations. The only difference was its hallway: unlike the first floor, there were no windows here. It was like the interior of a completely sealed-off crypt that was plunged into absolute darkness, devoid of even the faintest sliver of moonlight.

With zero visibility and no light source nearby, every step forward was a stumble in the dark, a potential collision waiting to happen.

Despite knowing that his next action would make him an easy target and expose him to the presence lurking in the darkness, he had to take the risk.

[Gray’s Lesser Illumination Spell]

With his chant complete, a palm-sized ball of light rose gently, circling around him like a playful little spirit.

The shadows receded before its glow, revealing his surroundings in sharp detail.

Like a child’s prank, mouths, eyes, and noses — human features of various sizes — were haphazardly scrawled across the wall at the top of the stairs, their overly bright colors deeply unsettling and out of place in the light.

The drawings were obviously childish and crude, yet they gave him an unsettling feeling.

Why would someone scrawl something so bizarre on the walls? Could it just be the work of some mischievous children, or was there something more to it?

Despite the strange graffiti, he noticed that the corridor was surprisingly well-maintained; If not for the dust-covered carpet, he would have never guessed it had been abandoned for a long time.

The peculiar paint on the wall caught his attention as well. He had a nagging feeling it was different from what was used on the first floor — it gave off an odd smell, as if it had been applied very recently.

The doubt in Gordon’s heart grew stronger.

The apartment’s ‘owner’, Bohlmann, had sternly warned them to avoid the upper floors entirely — a rather excessive demand, considering the clearly abandoned state of the second floor. Yet, something did not add up. If no one had been up here in ages and there were no windows in the hallway, why had the lights been on earlier?

The fresh paint on the walls was even more puzzling. Why bother repainting an abandoned floor, when the paint could be better used downstairs? How did they manage to paint around the graffiti without leaving a single smudge on it?

‘And what’s with all these eerie drawings? There’s no one living on the second floor; the old man is clearly living alone in this building, so those must be his work. Was he trying to reconnect with his inner child through these… “masterpieces”?’

Glancing up the winding staircase that led to the third floor, Gordon hesitated for a moment and decided against venturing any further.

A cold draft rushed down from above.

An ominous feeling washed over him — It felt like the second floor was a giant living thing, drawing icy wind into its unseen lungs.

A strong sense of unease relentlessly gnawed at his chest.

He hoped that it was just his imagination playing tricks on him.

Taking another look around, he noticed that the second floor was furnished almost identically to the first, except for the unsettling sculptures placed at either end of the corridor.

They depicted a colossal serpent of impossible length, its back adorned with a pair of clawed wings covered in spiked, barbed armor. Coiling its immense body around a towering iron tower, the serpent’s jaws were agape in a silent snarl, while its bull-like head — a tapestry of wrinkles and malice — bore the visage of a rakshasa devil.

It was an abomination of unknown origin and species, with physical characteristics unlike any creature from mythology or folklore. It was as if someone had simply thrown together features of different species to create this monster.

This mish-mash of traits was also why this creature defied simple categorization. Its body and head only vaguely resembled that of a python and a bull, with many differences that set it apart. These animals were merely the closest matches he could conjure with the depths of his knowledge.

For some reason, the sculpture gave Gordon a strange sense of familiarity. It was not the gigantic monster coiled around the tower that triggered this feeling, but rather…

His gaze fell upon the base of the sculpture, where a series of intricate, indecipherable symbols were etched into its surface. These strange characters were unlike anything he had encountered, eluding even the most comprehensive linguistic compendium he knew.

Although there was a figure at either end of the first-floor corridor, he only recalled them depicting the iron tower, without the monstrous creature present.

After a thorough examination, Gordon found the statue had nothing more to offer beyond its unusual design and remarkably lifelike details.

He then turned around to face the seemingly endless hallway, certain his eyes and ears had not deceived him. That dark figure had definitely run upstairs and vanished at the second-floor landing.

He had a strong feeling the mysterious individual was hiding somewhere on the second floor, silently watching him through the crack in a doorway.

Gordon pushed open the first door at the end of the corridor, allowing light to spill into the oppressive darkness. The room was sparsely furnished, with nothing there save for a bed and an empty bookshelf.

The bedding was not what he expected -rather than being neatly made from disuse, the covers were thrown back.

As he moved in for a closer look, Gordon noticed a thick layer of dust coating the surface.

His attention was drawn to the eerie graffiti haphazardly sprawled on the walls of the modestly-sized room. Just like in the stairwell, they depicted various human facial features, covering every surface including the ceiling.

Only the wall behind the bed remained untouched.

Gordon felt like he was being confined within this strange space. The drawings around him seemed to have come alive, silently staring and marking him as an intruder in their forbidden territory.

The room offered nothing of interest for him to explore; It was so barren that there was simply nowhere for anyone to hide in. He had checked under the bed as well, but to no avail.

Gordon exited the eerie space, apprehension washing over him as he carefully closed the door behind him and moved on to the next.

The second room was an exact replica of the first, with every detail reversed.

The same disturbing graffiti covered these walls as well.

For some unknown reason, Gordon had a nagging feeling that some sort of inexplicable order was behind all this, but the thought slipped away before he could grasp it.

He then directed his gaze to the bed. Unlike in the first room, where the cover was casually tossed aside, it was bunched up, as if hiding something underneath them.

With his medium-length sword at the ready, he cautiously approached, guided by his spell.

He could faintly discern a human-like silhouette beneath the fabric.

With his sword poised and ready, Gordon grabbed the edge of the blanket and flung it aside.

What greeted him was a wide, eerie grin and a pair of eyes crudely doodled like a prank, sending chills down his spine.

It was a life-sized puppet of extremely shoddy craftsmanship. Its facial features were hastily painted on, as if done as an afterthought. He could barely make out it was a human figure with arms and legs.

Despite being such a poor imitation of the human form, its appearance made his hair stand on end.

Gordon jerked back in surprise, his sword nearly piercing the puppet’s body.

“Who would play a prank like this?” He wondered, staring at the motionless puppet on the bed as an inexplicable annoyance rose within him.

The feeling of being watched quickly engulfed his entire body.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled; He had a nagging feeling that the lifeless, shoddily-made puppet was using its red, crayon-drawn eyes to size him up.

“Tch, how predictable. That old codger probably just made up those rules about the second and third floors to pique our curiosity and scare us.”

Although it was a bit far-fetched, that was not beyond the realm of impossibility.

‘He must have way too much time on his hands, doesn’t he? What exactly was he trying to achieve, placing all these creepy things around?’

“Thud, thud, thud…” The sound of footsteps suddenly rang out in the corridor, without a moment’s warning. This time, they were on the same floor as he was – just a short distance away!

Were they coming towards him from the far end of the corridor?

Gordon could no longer bother with the puppet on the bed. He quickly dispelled the illumination spell and hid under the bed. With the components for a spell clutched tightly in his hand, he listened intently to the movements outside the door.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl at that moment.

‘Thud, thud, thud…’ Each slow footstep pounded like a drum in his chest.

The footsteps came to an abrupt halt outside the first room, before the sound of the door opening resounded.

Whatever was out there paced back and forth in the adjacent space, as if searching for something. After a moment of silence, as if they had found nothing, they moved on to the next.

‘This isn’t good,’ Gordon thought to himself.

He had been too hasty in his search, leaving the door slightly ajar. Which meant…

“Creak.” The gap in the door widened. Gordon felt his heart leaping to his throat, as a wave of terror washed over him in the darkness.

Was this it, then?

Fear thrived on the unknown; The rational part of him urged him to strike first— spring out from under the bed to surprise the ‘person’ at the door, and find out what this suspicious figure actually looked like.

Yet, the desire to turn this situation to his advantage warred with his instincts of self preservation. Deep down, Gordon dreaded seeing the true form of that dark silhouette, fearing that something too horrifying would make him temporarily lose his bearings.

“Creak, thud, thud, thud…”

The dark figure seemed to hesitate for a moment. They then closed the door, turned around and left.

Gordon, tightly gripping the hilt of his sword beneath the bed, was stunned. As he heard the footsteps gradually fading away, he felt some of the tension left his nerves.

‘It’s leaving, already?’

‘No, something’s off. Even a blind person could tell something is wrong with this room. There’s no reason they wouldn’t search here… unless they’re deliberately holding back, waiting for me to walk right into their trap?’

Gordon waited a full ten minutes, ears strained for any sign of the suspicious footsteps. Once he was sure they were not coming back, he cautiously emerged from under the bed.

Wiping the sweat off his forehead, he cast a glance at the puppet resting on the bed.

He was not sure if it was just his imagination, but he could not shake the feeling that its hands were positioned differently than before…