Dylan was completely different from what Lohan had imagined.
If he had previously braced himself for dealing with a spoiled heir from the Upper East Side who might act unbearably due to an old romantic rivalry, he now realized that his concern had been completely unfounded.
Lohan even felt bad about that prejudice, especially considering that he knew Lisa and, with a more open mind, realized that her personality would never accept someone like he had imagined as a close friend.
’Good thing I never voiced that feeling at any point, or I might have needed to make amends with Lisa for that...’ Lohan sighed in relief at the thought.
Feelings like jealousy can be cute in some situations, but you never know how the other person would react to it and if it would affect their relationship; after all, they’d only known each other for a very short time, and it was still too soon to be sure of something like that.
"Guys, the vibe of our Guild Base being inside a colossal tree is incredible!! Considering we’ll be living near a nature-loving elven capital and stuff like that, I feel like this totally fits the style!" Dylan said excitedly, moving gracefully and effortlessly through the base, looking at the paintings Elle had made with great interest and excitement.
You could tell that Dylan’s soldiers were already used to his eccentric behavior, so they just ignored the boy and looked around with curiosity and a bit of doubt.
Just like Alice’s group of soldiers who came to the Open World excited by the image of Halon they’d conjured in their minds, they too were disappointed to see that the legendary assassin they’d imagined was actually just a little blue ball blinking two large, out-of-sync eyes.
The contrast between the two images was so stark that no one even knew how to react properly around this Vice President.
Dylan continued walking through Astralis’s main hall, moving with elegance despite the floor still being a mess. The boy stopped in front of one of the roots that Elle had delicately painted and sighed, his slender, delicate hands clasped behind his back.
"Girl, I’m not kidding, this place is way better than I imagined," Dylan remarked, turning to Lisa with a mischievous gleam in his light eyes. "The contrast between the rustic nature of this dead tree and the vitality you’re injecting into it... it’s almost a metaphor for what I went through to get my Rare Base."
Lohan, who now kept his two artificial eyes fixed on the newcomer, felt curious.
Lisa had mentioned that Dylan had taken longer than Alice to come to the Open World because he was involved in a mission to obtain a Rare Class, which seemed very interesting to him.
Information like that was priceless.
"Come on, Dylan, I know you want to tell us about it just as much as we want to hear it. Come on, tell me, how did it go?" Lisa asked as she sat down on a nearby tree root.
Dylan laughed, looking at Lisa as if he’d been caught red-handed. Then he sat down on a raised section of the root, crossing his legs in an aristocratic manner. "Honey, what happened was a true Gothic drama."
Moving his gaze around the group like a true storyteller, Dylan pointed to his own pointed ears and opened his mouth slightly, revealing his sharp teeth. "From my appearance, I think my Dhampir heritage is pretty clear, right?"
"Well, I don’t know how your Spawn went in the world, and considering that you spawned directly into the Open World, I’m dying to hear your story, but I came from an extinct family of Nobles. While exploring my new place there, I ended up finding a secret passage beneath the mausoleum of the village’s main family. It wasn’t an ordinary dungeon... it was a hidden path to a distant hideout of a cult called ’The Ebony Chalice’."
Dylan’s soldiers, who until then had maintained impeccable formation around the hall, relaxed their posture slightly to listen.
Brutus, the burly soldier with the scar on his cheek, took a step forward, wanting to make it clear that he was listening more intently than the others.
"There I discovered that, just like me, my recently deceased ’parents’ and the people of this cult were also Dhampirs, creatures who had lived in the shadows of society for millennia." Dylan continued, lowering his voice to a dramatic whisper. "According to them, they saw my ’appearance’ and decided that I would take on the old role of ’my parents,’ that of being a front for the organization. They needed someone who could move among humans without arousing suspicion, while they performed sacrificial rituals behind the scenes."
Lohan felt a chill run through his gelatin as he heard about Sacrifice. He vaguely recalled some memories he’d extracted from certain monsters and humans, but what Dylan was describing seemed far more organized and perverse.
"I had to attend dinners where the main course wasn’t food, but the life essence of Players or people from this world whom they captured in the vicinity of that Newbie Village," Dylan explained, making a dismissive gesture with his hand. "It was horrifying, of course, but the way they manipulated Mana through blood... well. To unlock the Rare Blood Aristocrat Class, I had to learn to ’filter’ that energy without losing my own sentience. They wanted to use me as a puppet, but instead, I mastered that power for myself and fled to the Open World; honestly, now I don’t even know if that was just a plot exclusive to Newbie Village or not."
As Dylan spoke, Brutus and the other soldiers began whispering among themselves. Lohan, with his keenest perception, could hear it clearly.
"Look at him..." one of the soldiers muttered to Brutus. "Master Dylan went through hell to get that power, and now we’re here, answering to a useless farce, what a disappointment."
Brutus didn’t respond immediately, but his face twisted into a sneer of disdain.
He looked at Lohan, who was standing on the ground, blinking his expressionless eyes in a strange way.
To a professional soldier trained to handle high-level threats, this Slime looked like it could be eliminated with a single strike, which was extremely humiliating to him.