The problem that had plagued Marcus for years was solved so easily by Chen Mo.
The armor blocked sunlight that would otherwise be lethal to vampires, while providing exceptional protection.
More than that, Chen Mo's meticulous design made the suit incredibly flexible — it didn't hinder movement at all. With a vampire's strength and endurance at roughly three times that of a normal person, wearing it constantly posed no problem.
In short: once clad in this new armor, vampires could move freely under the sun. The old weakness — hiding by day — was gone.
It was precisely because Chen Mo had solved this that he dared convert the entire order into vampires.
The knights who had become vampires grew stronger, but none dared challenge the one man left unturned — Chen Mo himself.
Beyond their unwavering loyalty and faith, after years following him they understood better than anyone how terrifying Chen Mo's true strength was. Even multiplied several times over by vampirism, none could match their war-god lord.
Not to mention Chen Mo's earlier display — the thunder he wielded that could incinerate everything in an instant. Even if they grew a dozen times stronger, they still could not stand against that instant annihilation.
Every knight revered Chen Mo without a stray thought. Not everyone could become a member of the order — otherwise their numbers would long ago have exceeded a thousand.
Chen Mo's keen perception let him see through anyone's thoughts; only the most loyal could qualify to join.
Among the entire order, only one man harbored different designs — Marcus.
Marcus had joined Chen Mo for his own ends, but his ambition to rule the world had not vanished. With Chen Mo's help, Marcus had gone from a shadow-dwelling outcast to the architect of a mighty vampire knight order. While the order did not belong to him yet, vampires had at last stepped onto history's stage — the first move toward their dominion.
When vampires eventually rose to the top of the world, Marcus believed his status as progenitor would soar. He might even remove Chen Mo and seize rule.
For now Marcus kept himself tame; the gap between their powers was too great. He did not sulk — vampires only needed time. Marcus's strength would grow with centuries, and as the first pure-blood vampire, his growth would outpace those he turned.
Marcus hid much of his true power. Yet after centuries, he was far beyond an ordinary vampire. The newly turned — Andrew and the others — possessed roughly three times a human's strength, comparable to werewolves in raw power.
Vampires lagged slightly behind werewolves in pure strength, but outpaced them in speed. With sturdy armor, fine weapons, and superior technique, a vampire knight individually outmatched an ordinary werewolf; massed, they could crush equal numbers of werewolves.
Marcus, however, was much stronger than those freshly made. His strength exceeded a normal human by more than fourfold, and his speed reached about five times human levels.
In raw physical terms, Marcus was already closing in on Chen Mo. To some degree, he could threaten Chen Mo — provided Chen Mo did not wear his alloy combat suit.
Marcus was arguably the most powerful being Chen Mo had encountered in this Underworld world so far. Coupled with centuries of battlefield experience, Chen Mo could not easily defeat him without calling on his energy weapons.
Chen Mo did not yet know Marcus's true limits, but he sensed it. Even as Marcus concealed power, a formidable aura leaked from him. Chen Mo understood Marcus's character and ambition, and remained on guard.
After the vampire knight order was complete, Chen Mo did not rush to use this new force to conquer. Instead, he paused expansion and devoted all effort to hunting down the werewolves within his territory.
His lands were vast. Whenever a werewolf trace appeared the order deployed, but in remote regions many still hid, roaming and threatening villagers. The earlier encounter with a pack of over a hundred had occurred because they'd been concealed in a distant mountain wood.
That pack's existence was anomalous.
By werewolf nature they wandered and slaughtered indiscriminately, leaving traces. Yet this huge pack had left no sign. They could not have hidden there forever; Chen Mo's patrols were too thorough. They could not have migrated in from elsewhere without leaving tracks that would have drawn the order's attention.
Only one possibility remained: this pack had been created nearby, and the culprit was the one Marcus had been hunting — his twin brother, the werewolf progenitor William.
Knights Chen Mo sent to scout confirmed his suspicion. Near the valley where the battle had occurred lay a village utterly slaughtered; the scene's timing matched the ambush.
Chen Mo guessed Marcus had tracked William here, followed the pack's trail to the woods, and witnessed Chen Mo's thunderous spectacle. William himself had not taken part in the ambush — he likely left earlier — so he did not encounter Chen Mo. The wolves left behind attacked the knights and were wiped out.
William likely still lurked somewhere within Chen Mo's domain — perhaps in a remote mountain forest, perhaps in the midst of slaughtering villagers.
A full-scale extermination and manhunt for William began.
As the operation unfolded, Chen Mo discovered a dramatic rise in werewolf numbers across his lands. Packs of dozens to hundreds, once rare, began appearing. Many villages were emptied — the living eaten, the bitten turned into wolves.
To eradicate these surging packs quickly, Chen Mo divided the knight order into five units, led respectively by Andrew, Victor, Amelia, Marcus, and himself. They moved fast across the territory.
If these werewolves were not eliminated soon, Chen Mo's lands would be butchered to ruin.
That fact alone showed the terrifying destructive power of William, progenitor of the werewolves.
If Alexander Kervinas had not been quietly cleaning up after William, burning corpses and preventing mass infection, Europe might already have been overrun by werewolves and humanity driven to extinction. Alexander, however, had not appeared this time — perhaps wary of Chen Mo's great strength and choosing to watch from the shadows.
Chen Mo ordered no mercy. Unlike Victor in the film, he did not chain werewolves for day-guard duty outside vampire castles. He wiped them out.
Even by day, the vampire knights scoured the land, relentlessly hunting and destroying werewolves.
The armored vampire order was supremely powerful; the emerging packs were quickly suppressed — yet William's trace remained elusive.
As Marcus's twin, William's strength, speed, and agility made him hard to find. But as the purge progressed, the knights learned his habits and patterns, discovering ever more clues. They drew steadily closer.
Tracking led all five units to a village at the foot of a mountain.
They had arrived too late. The settlement lay ruined: wooden huts torn apart, corpses of villagers and livestock scattered, no living thing remained. The peaceful village had become a field of death.
Anger flared within Chen Mo. This land was his domain; these had been his people — now slaughtered by some beast. He had lost count of how many villages had been destroyed. His patience had reached its limit.
Today he would end this scourge.
His gaze, sharp as a blade, swept the village. His face grew cold as ice.
"It just left this place!" he ordered in a chilling voice.
"Amelia! Stay with men and burn these corpses!"
"Everyone else! Begin the search at once!"
"Tonight — this ends."