After taking a little rest, all the ladies and Turin followed the maid that came to guide them and arrived in a large and well decorated garden. There was a large table present in the middle of the garden filled with a lot of food. The decorations in the garden were of the same style as the decorations that were in the city and it looked really beautiful.

As the duke had not told them that the discussion that was going to happen was a garden party, none of the ladies were dressed for an occasion like this. When Alisia told the duke about it, he simply smiled and said that only the members of his family and the servants were present in the party, so it was perfectly fine to be casual.

After hearing that, the ladies stopped worrying about their dresses and started to enjoy the party. The food that was prepared was exquisite and suited the palate of both vampires and elves. Seeing that everyone was enjoying the food, Duke Karl proudly told them that their family had an excellent cook who had been working for his family for generations. So serving amazing food was one of the things that the Moronto family took pride in.

Hyneward was also there and he started to talk with Kaya, Tomoe and Elena. He even eyes Turin every now and then. With his instinct of a battle maniac he was able to feel that Turin was extremely powerful. That was why he was eyeing his every now and then. He had already fought Tomoe and he felt that Elena was in a whole different league than him. As for Kaya, Hyneward felt that Kaya had a lot of potential and a chance to reach the S ranks in the future. At that time, her strength would definitely be exceptional even among the other S rankers.

After the party was over, Karl invited everyone to a large reception room. He was joined by Hyneward and another person named Joshua who was Karl's secretary. Two more maids who were Karl's concubines also followed them to the reception room. Karl had a total of three official wives and an uncountable number of concubines. So these two getting a chance to follow him implied that they had exceptional talent.

After settling down in the room, Karl finally started to address the situation. First he told everyone about the situation when the first head of the Moronto family took the duke title. He was an excellent man and had managed to recruit many good subordinates for the family. He had also managed to reach the demigod rank and was currently living in Valhalla.

He had many different methods to recruit good subordinates and one of his most used methods was competition between two good prospects. This way he had managed to find many good people who might not look like the best from one look but in a competition they were able to show their full potential.

There was once a time when this competition had become extremely famous throughout the whole Vampire Continent. As the first duke was paying extremely well, many vampires wanted to join him in his service. In this way the competition between the people also became extremely brutal. Later on even the people who were already working under him started to compete among themselves for higher rewards. This competition got extremely brutal and many of the subordinates even performed heinous tasks to win the competition.

Later on the duke stopped this type of competition and many of the servants who had done evil deeds for the sake of this competition were punished. That was how this troublesome problem was brought to an end.

The reason why the duke told the ladies about this was because the current incident was tied to this past event. Costogolomo was actually a retainer of the Moronto family in the past. He and Max's ancestors both had joined the first duke at almost the same time and were among the best people that he had managed to recruit.

For that reason, they were always competing with each other to see who was better. Costogolomo was stronger than Max's ancestor but he was also a simple and straightforward man. As for Max's ancestor, even though he was weaker than Costogolomo, he was very cunning. So using his intelligence he always tried to stay ahead of Costogolomo. But most of the time, he did not succeed in doing so as Costogolomo was just too strong and dedicated.

Then one day the duke brought news about a powerful item called the Goblet of Winter's End and told five of his best retainers about it. Max's ancestor and Costogolomo both were included in this. He gave them a mission to retrieve this item which should be found somewhere inside his domain.

All of five of his retainers started searching for it and in that process two of them even lost their lives. Costogolomo was included in that list. This was not something uncommon and that time the first duke did not think too much about it. As Max's ancestor was able to find this item, he was rewarded and became the head butler of the Moronto family.

But after reading the diary that Costogolomo wrote, one lie came to light. The duke knew about what effect the Goblet of Winter's End had and the fact that anyone who would be touching it first would face a terrible fate. And he had even told his retainers about it.

But this time as all the retainers were busy with their work in different parts of the domain, he was not able to tell all of them at the same time. So he told Max's ancestor about this first as he was in the house at that time and ordered him to tell the others about it.

But now it turned out that he had not followed the Duke's orders and had not told Costogolomo about this fact. So without knowing it, he touched the Goblet of Winter's End and had turned into a single heart because of the counter attack. So it was basically Max's ancestor killing him by hiding crucial information.

The reason Max wanted to hide this so badly was because from the secret notes of his family, he knew about this incident. If it came to light, all the prestige that his family had built up over the years would just disappear into thin air and he might even lose his position as the head butler. That was definitely something Max wanted to prevent.

His family had left behind a blood Mark of Costogolomo and by using a magic item, it was possible to find the person to whom that mark belonged too. When the heart was buried, the signal of this item was blocked and for that reason Karl was unable to find the heart beforehand. But after the heart was dug up, he again started to get a signal from the heart about its location. Seeing this he immediately sent people to take care of it.

That was the whole incident behind this large heart. After telling them about it, the duke took out a bluish goblet with silver designs on it. This was the Goblet of Winter's End and he was just about to use it to remove the curse of non healing from the heart's owner.

Now what was going to happen ?

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