1935-B Dr. Feelgreed/Digression 2: The Sweetheart Is Guileless

Synopsis
In 2003, Dalton Strauss tells an unnamed mortal the story of how he attained immortality and his happier and unhappier consequent experiences. Many of the former he enjoyed while travelling the world, encountering werewolves and vampires on one island and dullahans on another. His unhappiest memories involve the loss of seven of his nine alchemy apprentices who attained immortality alongside him: of their shared eternity, the first ten years were peaceful; the three years that followed were of cannibalistic carnage, sparked when one timid apprentice devoured his mother—another apprentice—out of paranoia that he would be devoured if he did not devour first. Another apprentice, Archangelo, adopted a similar line of thinking—that Renee Parmedes Branvillier, whom he loved, would be devoured if he not devour on her behalf—and he did, again and again, until only he, Renee, and Dalton were left. Dalton neutralized himself as a threat by surrendering his own right hand to Archangelo, a decision responsible for his continued survival.

That this achievement of immortality had such an unhappy ending calls into question Dalton's motives for leading Maiza Avaro down the same eternal path; or so Dalton acknowledges. He admits he has likely lost "most of his humanity" and that his fostering of a new batch of immortals is an experiment of sorts; it is implied that he wants to see whether immortality will bring misfortune or fortune to his new apprentices Maiza, Elmer C. Albatross, and Huey Laforet. Mortality, meanwhile, stands to bring happiness to the unnamed mortal, Dalton says, whom he further advises against prying into the world of the "grotesque."

Trivia

 * The unnamed mortal is likely Accardo's Descendant.