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Mathias Cronqvist, born in 1062, was a member of the legendary Cronqvist family. Born in a time where the world was lacking in education, the Cronqvist family stood out as a beacon of incredible knowledge. The family orally passed down teachings of alchemy and magic, eventually ending up in Mathias’ hands. Mathias, possibly the smartest and most prodigious of his family, wrote down these teachings in a notebook and studied them for years.
Years passed and Mathias quickly became friends with a young knight named Leon Belmont. With Mathias fighting for the church as a master tactician, and Leon fighting as an unrivaled swordsman, they made their company of knights nigh-invincible. One fateful day, however, Mathias received news that his wife, Elisabetha, died from an illness. Horribly wounded by this news, Mathias headed home and was bedridden.
During his time alone and suffering from horrible grief, Mathias’ mind began to twist. Realizing that all he ever prayed for during his expeditions was Elisabetha’s continued safety, he grew to develop a deep hatred of God for taking away the only thing he ever asked to keep safe. Using his immense intelligence that surpassed nearly everyone on Earth, Mathias devised a master plan.
Losing all ties to his friends and blinded by his grief and anger towards God, Mathias decided to use everyone he needed in order to realize his goals; he used Leon Belmont, Leon’s betrothed Sara Trantoul, the alchemist Rinaldo Gandolfi, and even the vampire king Walter Bernhard, to obtain a powerful relic known as the Crimson Stone: a godly relic written about in alchemic texts which Mathias had studied.
Absorbing Walter’s vampiric soul into the stone and then absorbing the stone itself, Mathias’ power grew immensely; not only did he gain vampiric powers from Walter’s soul, but also eternal life, in which he would use to spite God’s decree of mortals having limited life. Furthermore, because he was the embodiment of everything that opposed God’s order and law, Mathias’ power source became the primordial entity, Chaos. Due to becoming the King of the Crimson Stone and the Dark Lord, the entity known as Death became subservient to him.
Although Leon knew he had to defeat Mathias, the vampire quickly escaped and left Death to deal with his old friend. From that day on, Mathias had kickstarted a blood feud between him and his former brother-in-arms; the Belmont Clan would go on to hunt Mathias for the next several centuries.
Soon afterwards, as Mathias continued to plague the lands as the Dark Lord, he went to change his name to Dracula Vlad Ţepeş; widely known to the public as Count Dracula. He continued his hatred of God as a bitter, immortal man, until one day he came across a woman known as Lisa and was shocked by how much she fully accepted him and how she bore resemblance to his former wife, Elisabetha.
Slowly but surely, Dracula warmed up to Lisa and let her into his life. The two got married and they bore a child together who possessed the powers of a vampire but the heart of a human named Adrian Fahrenheit Ţepeş. Their family lived very happily for a time, until the church caught on to Lisa’s marriage to the Dark Lord. Lisa was quickly taken and crucified in front of her son, Adrian, while Dracula was away at the time.
However, when Dracula eventually found out about her murder, he was infuriated. Yet another wife, another person he let into his life and fully loved, taken away from him. Unstoppably infuriated, Dracula turned his hatred from not only being on God, but to human kind as a whole, sparking Count Dracula’s war on humanity.
Because of this war, the Belmont Clan was alerted and rushed to the Transylvanian countryside to finally take out Dracula. Trevor Belmont, teaming with several other powerful warriors (including Dracula’s son, who now went by Alucard,) confronted Count Dracula and was the first one to slay him.
Dracula was killed, but this would only be the first of many times. For the next five hundred or so years, the Dark Lord would be resurrected and slayed by vampire hunters time and time again.
Malus is the reincarnation of the Dark Lord, Count Dracula. In the year 1844, when Dracula was facing off against the man-beast, Cornell, Dracula forced Cornell to shed his beast form in order to rescue his adoptive sister, Ada. Thanks to this, Count Dracula was able to snatch Cornell’s man-beast powers, and died with them after Cornell struck him down.
After Dracula’s death, his servants were able to recover Cornell’s man-beast powers that he had stolen and used those powers to ensure that Dracula would reincarnate into a new body. Sure enough, a young boy with blue hair was born to a couple in a forest cabin under a blood moon; Malus.
By the time Malus turned eight years old, he realized that he was Dracula reincarnated, but knew that he could not recover his full power and form, lest he reveal his presence to vampire hunters before he is ready. Because of this, Malus lamented that someone of his power had to have gone through childhood again.
Eventually, Dracula’s servants began kidnapping children and bringing them to Dracula’s Castle, as it was prophesied that the child Dark Lord would reveal himself in the castle. This included Malus, who saw the opportunity as a way to lure in vampire hunters and deceive them.
Eventually, his plans come to fruition, as the church sends in vampire hunters like Henry Oldrey and Reinhardt Schneider, along with the young Carrie Fernandez, to rescue these children and destroy the castle. Reinhardt and Carrie in particular come in contact with Malus, who he successfully deceives into growing closer with him.
However, after Reinhardt and Carrie destroy who they believe to be Count Dracula, Malus reveals himself by shooting them with a bow & arrow from atop a dark pegasus. Reinhardt and Carrie are both shocked as Malus is finally able to reveal his true identity and ages himself into an adult form that can contain his full powers.
Malus and the vampire hunters face off in a legendary battle, with Malus even transporting them to an alternate realm and taking the form of a horrid dragon-like beast in order to stop them. However, Malus was unsuccessful in the battle, and was struck down. At last, the Dark Lord was defeated once more.
Eventually, the day came in 1999, when Dracula was revived at his peak of strength. A massive war began, between Dracula’s forces and the armies of mankind. Spearheading the charge on the side of mortals was Julius Belmont; a distant descendant of Mathias’ old friend, Leon.
Julius reached Dracula and finally slayed the Dark Lord for good, sealing him away in the lunar eclipse alongside the Belmont Clan’s legendary weapon, the Vampire Killer whip; the Vampire Killer whip being sealed alongside Dracula’s soul would serve as a magical seal, keeping him away for the rest of time.
For the first time in the past 900 years, Dracula was dead with no way to resurrect himself. With no other options, Dracula and his powers were reincarnated into a new body completely unaware of his past. This new body was that of a Japanese high-schooler named Soma Cruz, who would spend the majority of his teen years trying to suppress Dracula’s dark powers from taking control of him.
However, Soma would finally find the source of Dracula’s power in the Chaotic Realm, with the entity known as Chaos. Directly challenging it and taking it out, Soma finally ended the source of the Dark Lord’s power and the book closed on a long saga of hatred and grief.
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