"Oh, yes, will you be coming to Cordelia's funeral?"

With a light tone, Karlheinz carelessly opened the conversation with the Founder sitting in front of him. There was no sense of grief in his posture or voice, his expression did not depict loss, and in the depth of his eyes, Aku could read a form of sadistic entertainment.

Aku hummed, eyes lidded and lashes lowered as a mild sense of regret invaded him. Cordelia's funeral was it?

He nodded. "Give me the place and time. I'll be sure to prepare flowers."

The smile on Karlheiz's lips stretched at those words before he nodded in understanding. "Of course, I'll be sure to have one of my people send you an invitation with the details," he consented. Seeing as Aku merely nodded before going back to his thoughts, Karlheinz raised a teasing eyebrow. "I didn't think that your cousin's death would affect you so much."

Aku blinked. "Oh, no, it's nothing of the sort." As someone who once sold his only aunt for personal gains, the chances of Aku regretting killing his cousin off for his Clan's benefits were low. In fact, they were nonexistent. "I just think that it's a shame she got burned to death. I would have loved to add her emerald eyes to my collection," he sighed in dismay, his lips pursing down.

He regretted not plucking those eyes out when Cordelia laid in the fuming bushes. Still, he did not want to reveal too much entanglement to her assassination, lest he later received negative repercussions.

"Oh, now that sounds like something I'd hear from you," Karlheinz laughed.

Aku merely smiled in polite acknowledgment.

The Vampire Lord brought his hands together, carelessly observing the Founder, his lips carefully quirked up into a meaningful smile. In his eyes, there was a light that Aku did not care to acknowledge as he began to hum to get the said younger Demon's attention.

"While I am at it, I recently consulted one of the Clan's more proficient seers," he began, amused chuckles slipping past his lips and drowning his words.

Aku paused. "Seers?"

The power of prescience or foresight was not a rare gift. It was something granted to all Founders, with varying degrees of precision and control. Most of the time, only a handful of the population was proficient enough to exercise divination. The most proficient Demonic race was the Sirens Clan, a sub-Clan that emanated from the Adler. They were renowned through the Demonic realms for their priests and priestesses and enjoyed a considerable amount of fame and respect despite their poor offensive abilities.

Nevertheless, regarding other clans, there usually existed a few gifted individuals, but the road to mastering their powers of foresight was complicated and required total dedication.

As a Founder, Aku could see bits of the future, but not enough to precisely predict what would happen. Foresight was not something Aku favored. He liked to be prepared and know as much as possible before negotiating. Still, he also believed that knowing the outcome of negotiations would make him complacent, so he never cared to better his foresight.

Aku could see major turning points easily. Details were another story. He could see the event but not what led to it or its consequences.

"Yes, I asked one of my Clan's seers about the state of my household," Karlheinz explained. "Although Cordelia didn't get along with either Beatrix or Christa, she was still a pivotal member within the estate."

Finding sense in Karlheinz's words, Aku nodded.

"The prediction wasn't on the scale of the Sirens' High Priests, but apparently, other death should follow Cordelia's soon enough," he said, uncaring of them.

"It shouldn't be revenge," Aku confirmed with certainty. Cordelia's murderers were her children. They wouldn't avenge her. Richter, despite being her Lover, beneficiated from the Adam and Eve project, it seemed. Therefore he wouldn't work against the remaining Sakamaki for now. He was the one to place Cordelia's heart in a resting chamber until they found the right human child to serve as host. And Aku, well, he didn't care enough to think about revenge.

Karlheinz grinned. "Of course, it's not revenge. It should be another two vampiricides."

It took a moment for Aku to understand that two other Vampires would die within the estate. From his previous statement, it wouldn't be the triplets. Aku knew that Christa was unstable and that her son Subaru often suffered from her crisis, but the boy loved his mother too much to turn his back on her, just like how Christa loved him when lucid. Christa loved Subaru to death, she herself wanted to die, and her hysteria almost made her kill herself or her child more than once. Christa would probably die and by her son's hands. That left one other Vampire.

Of Beatrix, Reiji, and Shu, the least likely to commit murder was Shu. Because unless cornered and deeply wounded, Shu preferred to let it go and turn away from the problem. In a way, Shu appeared the most cowardly of all his siblings to Aku. That left Beatrix and Reiji. Despite her partial love, Beatrix still cherished both of her sons. She wouldn't dream of killing them— the one to raise a knife would be Reiji. Add to this the fact that Reiji recently got into developing parasitic poisons and the likes. It only made sense. Cordelia's assassination would be the tilting point, pushing him to the edge before committing the act. The question was whether he'd dirty his hands or use someone else to do it like with Shu's childhood human friend.

Aku brought his drink to his lips. He gently sipped on the beverage, an expression of exaggerated sadness overcoming him. "To become a widower so quickly, how sad," he drawled.

Karlheinz chuckled. "Aren't I pitiful?" he mused. "I suppose it means I'll have to look for my sons' brides now," he announced with dismay.

"Brides for your sons?"

Karlheinz grinned.

"Exactly, and if I recall, weren't you a great help in selecting my wives, Aku?"

Aku's smile turned back to its plastic form as he hummed, urging the Vampire Lord to speak his mind.

"I was thinking that you might be of great advice for them. I also need someone to keep an eye on them, so they don't cause too much trouble."

Aku blinked. "You want me to be a nanny?"

Karlheinz smiled, gently shaking his head. "Now, don't word it like that. I'm not asking you to become their nanny. I'm simply putting in a favor."

It took a second for Aku to weight the pros and cons, but he allowed a few more seconds to pass to fake his indecision.

"Well, a favor from the Vampire Lord isn't something easy to come by. I don't see why I should refuse."

Both grinned, golden eyes mirroring each other's maniacal expressions.

As the Vampire seer predicted, two other deaths followed Cordelia's passing.

They happened after Cordelia's funeral, an event that reunited members of the Vampire Clan and a representative sent by the Vibora King. The ceremony had been short and straight to the point, and as promised, Aku brought a bouquet with him. He had opted out of the wreaths, finding them unsightly, and had instead accorded great care to the floral composition. Cordelia remained of Founder's blood. Despite only being a half, it was vital for her to have something worthy of a Founder at least once. He had also been careful to have one of the Mikazuki relics buried with her as a symbol of her mother's lineage within the First Blood clan.

Either way, a month or so after Cordelia's death, Beatrix passed away. It was painted as an ambush by an experienced Vampire hunter as the former Christian heiress came back from visiting her family. A tragic event, especially since it followed the first wife's death and funeral so closely.

Like with Cordelia, funerals were quickly organized. This time, the number of high-ranked Vampires to join the ceremony had been more important, as well as the number of flowers laid on the tombstone. Aku even discerned a few exotic ones in the cluster of flowers, ranging from rare to common but of extreme beauty and quality. This time, he simply brought an expensive wreath, and when Aku met Reiji and Shu's stoic faces, he was sure to give them a smile. A smile riddled with meaning and hidden intentions.

After this, Aku thought that Christa's death would be the following week, but to his surprise, the woman only died a month later. They ruled the case as suicide, but it was more similar to euthanasia in Aku's dictionary. The one performing the 'operation' was Subaru as predicted, and throughout the funerals that followed, the boy kept the weapon close to his chest like a precious treasure. Despite coming from an old Vampire family, Christa's family, the Shiraishi, lacked influence. It was a small ceremony, smaller than Cordelia's and Beatrix's, but Aku thought it was the best as it wasn't as tiring. He laid a simple white rose, one covered in eternal morning dew— a breed from the Adler peak, before quickly excusing himself.

With this, Karlheinz found himself the youngest Demon Lord to ever be crowned and the youngest Demon Lord to become a total widower.

A week only after the last funerals, the first bride was sent to the Sakamaki estate. Aku supposed the timing wasn't the best, and luck wasn't on the girl's side because she stumbled upon Subaru's mother's rose garden on her second day and met the sixth son who ever so kindly led her to her immediate death in a fit of unrestrained anger.

The same thing did not happen to the second and third brides who came in simultaneously, three days after Subaru killed the first one, but Laito managed to get a hold of one while Reiji magnanimously gifted tea to the other. Needless to say that they did not last until the end of the week.

So after the fourth, fifth up until the tenth bride's death, Aku sped up his moving schedule, and it was only two weeks after Christa's funerals that he moved into the Sakamaki estate. On his way there, three other brides died, making for a total of thirteen brides breaking in the short span of a week.

They decided to rename the brides "Sacrificial Brides" as a joke, but the name stuck, and the Sakamaki brothers found themselves welcoming at least one new bride each time the previous one passed away.

On Kanato's request, they had another annex built to store away the brides and his mother's previous boy toys. The mention of boy toys briefly reminded Aku of Glaciel; his very own boy toy turned Spirit before he brushed the thought away to focus on the more pressing matters at hand.

Going to school, for example.

Aku had no plans to follow a school curriculum anytime soon, and he also didn't plan on having the Sakamaki brothers attend high school or university at the moment. He didn't doubt their capabilities. He simply thought it wouldn't be beneficial to follow a human curriculum if you didn't start from scratch.

In the beginning, the Sakamaki lived at the boundary between the Human and Demon realm. So, of course, they wouldn't care, but now that sacrificial brides were coming, they would need to accustom themselves more.

So the Sakamaki's learning experience began with the arrival of the twentieth bride.

From Japanese classes to 'common sense' courses, nothing was omitted.

They learned the language, picked another if they felt the need or want to. They were allowed to travel out of Japan, where the boundary was located, and when all six brothers decided to go their merry ways, they were all assigned brides to follow them around.

Some lived, some died— some outlived others. The critical point is they all died, either because the Sakamaki killed them or they killed themselves.

Aku believed he was doing quite well.

Information on the Adam and Eve project came to him whenever a new update came in. He learned not long after getting settled in the estate that they had found a body for Cordelia's heart, creating the Eve and that now all he needed to do was observe.

Not being Eve surely meant dying for the brides, but Aku felt no guilt, only a bland sense of entertainment that turned to boredom as time passed.

Like this, years passed, and quickly, seventeen human years had gone by.

Eve had reached maturity.