"The man is alive. The woman is already dead."

Percy answered Rita’s question with a small frown, and Rita closed her eyes tight and bowed her head as a tremor went through her heart! A sudden sob threatened to escape from Rita’s lips, but she swallowed her tears immediately and turned to leave! Percy’s voice stopped her in her tracks as he asked.

"Do you know who this is, Rita?"

Rita hesitated to answer for a few seconds, and her hands shook slightly as a wave of emotion filled her heart, but then Rita let out a shuddering breath and spoke:

"That woman... she was my sister."

That was the only thing Rita said, and Percy watched as Rita walked away quickly. Percy turned back to look at the dead woman on the floor, and he could easily see the resemblances between the two women. But even though she was dead, Percy could tell that this woman was nothing like Rita just from looking at her.

’We need to find out what happened. I know I set up dimensional travel defences around this library to prevent people from opening Dimensional Doors. How were they able to get in here? And what were they running from?’

Percy glanced over the injuries once again, and he knew that the two of them must have been in a massive fight for them to get this hurt. Percy would have to wait until the man woke up to ask them what happened.

"Lana, help me with this. Take them to the clinic upstairs; I’ll come later to take care of it."

Lana saluted with a loud ’Yes, master!’ and she quickly went to do as she was told! But Viva stepped forward and spoke in a shocked voice!

"Wait, what do you mean you want to take them upstairs! We should report this to the City Guards! This was obviously a murder!"

Percy immediately shut down that idea.

"This is outside the jurisdiction of the city guards. Unless your colleagues suddenly developed the ability to interfere in interdimensional situations, there’s no need to involve them. And I won’t tolerate you telling anyone outside this library about what just happened. You’re my employee now, and anything that happens while you’re under my employment will stay with you till death. Do you understand?"

Percy gave Viva a hard look when he was done talking, and Viva swallowed as she felt an intense pressure coming off Percy! Even if Percy wasn’t using any mana to threaten her, just looking at him told her that disobedience would have some serious consequences! Viva was an officer, and it was obvious that she would want to report this to her superiors, but at that moment, Viva decided to just watch and see what Percy would do about this first. After all, Percy was right about this being outside their jurisdiction. What exactly could the City Guards do about a murder that happened in another dimension!?

Viva nodded to Percy.

"Fine. I won’t say anything."

"Good. Now clean this up."

Percy gestured towards the blood all over the floor, and Viva pouted angrily at the order before she sighed! Viva hated being a maid!

....

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Percy spoke as he walked into his bedroom calmly. Rita was standing on the other side of the room and looking out the window with her hands folded across her chest. There was a faraway look in Rita’s eyes, like she was seeing something that didn’t exist in front of her, and Percy could tell that she was thinking about her past.

Rita turned around when she heard Percy’s voice, and she gave him a kind smile and told him that she was fine.

"I don’t have anything to talk about. It’s alright."

Percy walked up to the window to stand in front of Rita, and he looked down at her with a frown.

"It’s not alright, Rita. Your sister’s dead."

Rita’s hands tightened into fists once she heard that, and Percy took her by the shoulder.

"It’s okay to mourn."

"I don’t need to mourn that woman. It’s not like we ever treated each other as siblings."

Rita turned away to look out the window again, and Percy let out a calm sigh. Usually, anyone would feel sad or angry if they saw their dead sibling right in front of them. But Rita’s cold reaction only showed how little she cared about the people she had once called her family, and at the same time, Percy could see a massive internal war going on behind Rita’s eyes. Rita did not even know how she should feel about her sister’s death!

Rita’s story was something that she did not like talking about, and she had only told Percy about her past once before. Rita was born to a very influential family in the Vampire world of Varina, and her father served as one of the noble leaders directly under the king. But even though Rita was part of a rich family, she was never treated well by the rest of her family. Her father had three wives, and Rita’s mother was the third and youngest wife. Rita and her mother were maltreated by the other wives and their siblings, and Rita was always reminded of how low she was in the family hierarchy!

But even though the rest of the family hated her, Rita was able to tolerate their treatment since she knew that both her mother and father loved her. Her father loved all of his wives and children equally, and he never discriminated against them, and Rita’s mother did her best to shield Rita from the maltreatment by the other wives and their children!

But things had gone to hell when the three-way war on Varina began. During one of the battles, the castle where Rita and her mother lived was attacked by an enemy faction, and Rita’s mother ended up being killed in that fight.

Rita was captured by the enemy faction, and they started using her as a bargaining chip to try to make her father surrender. But Rita’s father refused all of their demands, and Rita realised that her father was willing to leave her to die just for his ambition! There was truly no one in that family who cared about her!

It was in the underground dungeon where she had been left to rot and die that Rita was found by Percy! After she decided to stay with Percy forever, Rita completely shed all of her past, and she decided she wouldn’t bother going back to visit her family on Varina! They had abandoned her, and they allowed her mother to die, so Rita was perfectly fine with forgetting they existed!

"I didn’t think I’d ever see her again. And even if I did, I didn’t think she’d be dead."

Rita finally spoke up after a few seconds of silence, and Percy wrapped a hand around her shoulder and held her close. Percy knew that Rita didn’t have any love for her sister. But even if she didn’t, they were still sisters.

Percy spoke calmly:

"What do you think happened to her?"

Rita thought for a few seconds before she said:

"It might be one of the enemy factions. The soldier who appeared with her is part of my family’s personal army. If he came here with her, then it’s possible they were ambushed, and they had to escape."

Percy nodded, and he asked Rita if she wanted to come with him to see them. Rita nodded as she cleaned the few tears that fell from her cheek.

"Yeah, I’ll help you. Don’t worry about me, baby. I’m fine."

Percy smiled, and he leaned down and kissed Rita before both of them left the room and headed towards the clinic. The clinic was a massive room behind another shelf on the upper floors of the library. The clinic had white walls with more than ten beds arranged along the walls in straight lines. There was an inner room where most of the medicinal potions and the doctor’s equipment were stored, and there was a window on one side of the room that had a view of a large lake outside the Academy.