Chapter 87: Vampire V Vampire
Chapter 87: Vampire V Vampire
"You damn little dalcop!"
The furious, bleeding, one-legged vampire roared at me, his crimson eyes burning with anger like I just killed his mother.
But I didn't care. It didn't matter how angry he was. It didn't matter that he was a higher level than me. It didn't matter that he had secrets that were important to me.
None of that mattered.
Because he was going down.
I raised my right arm again. Despite my wrist ending in nothing but a charred stump, I didn't concern myself with such an insignificant detail and channelled my mana once again to fire a finishing blow on this rapist vampire.
"Too slow."
He sneered.
Before I could understand why he said such a thing, the stone ground exploded behind him and he had already covered half the distance between us.
I threw my body with all my might to my left, desperate to dodge his rising claws.
But I was only partially successful, his surprise attack, both faster and more ferocious than I expected.
A sharp pain flared out from my shoulder, but without the time to concern myself with such a detail, I kicked off the ground again and again, moving around as erratically as I could until I could make some distance.
But perhaps his attack was too rash, as rather than follow me, the sounds of shattering stone came from behind.
When I turned, I saw that he had crashed into one of those stone pillars, the remains breaking apart and pummelling the taller vampire, though probably to little more than a minor annoyance.
Glancing to my right side, my hand reached out to the bloody stump that was my right arm. Everything just below the shoulder was gone, dripping a steady stream of blood instead. I grabbed my shoulder just above the wound and squeezed it in an attempt to cut the blood loss as I applied [Aqua Magic] to at least close the wound.
Just as the bleeding stopped, the sound of stone on stone reverberated through the enormous room.
The broken remains of that stone pillar was forcibly pushed aside as the figure of that bastard emerged, his clothes ripped all over the place leaving most of his upper body bare.
In his hand was a bloody limb.
My limb. My arm.
And he bit into it, making an exaggerated sucking motion, as if just to make a show to me.
It made me cringe, my stomach turned in on itself, but my heart raced for a different reason. I wanted to tear my fangs into his body, suck his blood out, then spit it back into his face.
"Gah! Your blood has no taste! And I can't get any of your skills."
To be frank, I wasn't surprised that he found my blood tasteless. I've tried it myself and it tasted little better than stale water.
"If you can't be good feed, then I'll tear your limbs apart and make you work twice as hard as a breeding vessel!"
That, though, was something I was going to pass on. Forcibly.
With an explosion of rock fragments, this time I was ready for his charge and had no trouble dodging to the side, easily avoiding his one dimensional attack.
That was, if it was one dimensional.
As I turned to watch him sail past me, that damn pillock landed near the entrance before turning to me and giving me a greasy grin.
For a moment I was worried he was going to run for it or something when he did something far, far worse.
He grabbed the body of the woman I had accidentally killed earlier then sucked out the remaining blood out of her body.
He fed off of the body of his own daughter.
"You...you..."
I didn't have the words for it. My vision simply filled with red, just as full and rich as the red he was draining from that woman's body.
Unable to express myself with words, I threw out my arm and fired off ice lances at him.
One, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty two.
I didn't know how many, but I fired salvo after salvo, each bigger than the least.
"Grah!"
There was a roar, and I instinctively jumped to the side, but even that was too slow when I was distracted by my emotions.
Pain flared up on my left leg as four red gashes appeared on my outer thigh.
Fortunately, it wasn't deep enough to sever my leg, but until I healed the wound, I couldn't use it.
Looking behind me, that prick had gouged a long tear in the ground, using his left foot's claws to stop his momentum.
The bleeding in his lower body stopped and some of his wounds had even healed. His mini-me was dangling freely like a 14 century Scotsman through the burned away remains of his pants. It was as if he was deliberately presenting me with a bull's eye to aim for.
His leg, however, had only partially healed. There was a clean stump sticking out of his thigh, but there wasn't even a knee on it. The blood he drank wasn't nearly enough to repair the damage I had caused in the opening attack.
[Claret! Come back!]
I screamed out my command to my familiar. This fight was going to be rough, and I wanted every advantage I could get.
[Master!]
I clearly heard her response and felt her presence race back this way.
But before I could do anything else, he kicked off the stone floor once again and shot at me like a cannon.
I thrust my good leg against the stone as well and threw my body to the side, narrowly avoiding the mana condensed claws.
But as I landed on my hands and knees from the poorly made movement, pain raced up my spine as blood spilt profusely from my leg wound.
Things were going badly. I was at a severe disadvantage and it was only getting worse.
My HP was at 1,112,981/1,892,501.
Alicia was constantly updating Bolthorn's status, but he was showing 2,218,298/2,737,554.
Both in terms of relative HP as well as absolute, I was being beaten.
We were both short one limb, but I had lost most use of my leg on top of that.
I didn't know how I could win. I didn't know if it was possible.
While I was still in a position where I could run, I didn't want to.
I couldn't give up.
It wasn't just that other people's lives were on the line, but I didn't want to give up.
Not against him.
He kicked off the ground again.
He was still doing that same attack over and over. Most likely because it's been working.
But possibly to lower my guard as well.
I couldn't let either possibility cloud my judgment.
Pushing off the ground with my hands and my good leg, instead of simply dodging to the side, I propelled my body to the air.
At the same time, I activated [Spirit Form].
That needle-dick turned his head towards me and sneered.
But I didn't activate the skill to hide from him. I already knew his skills, and knew that he did have [Spirit Perception], [Mana Perception], and [Sense Presence]. Any one of those would be enough to find my location, but all three, and at half decent levels, meant that he knew exactly where I was at all times.
Even if I activated [Sneaking], [Suppress Presence], and [Suppress Aura], I wasn't confident that I could avoid his sight well enough in the middle of a battle.
Instead, I activated one of my favourite skills: [Alter Silhouette].
Growing out my wings, I quickly flapped them as they were forming to alter my trajectory and avoid any followup attacks. At the same time I forcibly closed the wound on my leg and grew out a new arm. The skill did nothing for my HP, but at the very least I had my limbs back, along with a pair of new ones.
When I turned to look at my enemy, it was obvious my action was beyond his imagination. His eyes bulged like a toad's.
This time it was my turn to sneer.
While the room wasn't really big enough to fly properly, my wings meant that I was given a degree of freedom that the ground-bound moron wasn't allowed.
That moron kicked off the ground once again and flew like an arrow towards me, but a light flap of my wings diverted my trajectory so that I was far out of reach of him. Impacting the ceiling, a cloud of dust blew around and stone fragments fell.
His figure became hidden from my sight, but he couldn't fool my [Sense Presence]. Despite it getting a little weaker, I had no trouble keeping track of him.
After a moment, a dark silhouette dashed to the side of the dust cloud then rushed towards me. Not only did that bastard fail to hide his presence well enough, but the skills he used to hide his body failed to even defeat my eyes.
From my hand, I fired off a volley of ice lances at the darkened figure.
Instinct was instinct it seemed, as I ended up using one of my favourite spells rather than the optimal one in the situation. That fact reared it's ugly head.
The magical ice shattered as dark blurs smashed into them. I thought I could see traces of mana condensed claws from those smears, but regardless, my attack was entirely ineffective.
Twisting my body, I flapped my wings and threw my body sideways, avoiding the not-so-stealthy figure.
But putting in too much strength into my wings caused my to accelerate too much. Before I could reorient myself, my back came into contact with stone, and by the time I realized it, I had broken through one of the stone pillars in the room.
I quickly flew out of that rubble and reoriented myself again. That crooked prick had already launched himself towards me, but I was ready.
Flapping lightly to avoid any uncontrolled acceleration, I avoided his cannonball manoeuvre. Just as he passed by me, I pointed a finger from my reformed right hand and fired a beam of iridescent light at him.
"Guaaa!!!"
As my finger turned into ash and fell away like the end of a burning cigarette, an annoyingly loud roar echoed across the room and the shadowy figure crashed into the ground after bouncing off of a wall.
The dark blur dissipated and the pillock's figure emerged, crumpled on the broken stone flooring.
There was a small burn line in his side. It seemed like I had only gotten a glancing blow.
He glared at me and bared his fangs, but in turn I simply pointed at him with my middle finger and readied another shot.
But before I could let loose another laser, the bastard kicked off the ground.
I did my best to track his movements as he erratically zigzagged back and forth.
*Poof! Poof! Poof!*
At the cost of a finger each, I fired off beams of [Light Magic], but all I got was rock vapour and a small crater as I missed each shot.
Gritting my teeth through the pain, I focused harder and took my time before I used my pinkie to fire off another shot.
The flash of light as the beam impacted the stone floor blinded me for a split second and I was disheartened at another wasted shot. But to my surprise, the ass hole vampire tumbled moments later, faltering on his landing.
There was a black line on his leg as I had gotten another glancing blow.
Not one to let go of a prime opportunity, I fired off another shot at his centre mass, my thumb being turned into ash in exchange.
But due to my haste I hadn't noticed that he wasn't especially vulnerable, as he simply slammed a fist into the ground and rolled his body.
My thumb's sacrifice was to vain as the beam didn't even get close to getting a hit.
(But this time I've got him.)
I might have been out of fingers on my right hand, but that didn't mean that I couldn't fire off more lasers.
Pointing the burnt stubs of my knuckles on my hand, I fired off another shot. But unlike the previous shots, it didn't miss because that ass dodged my shot. It just went wide.
Frustrated, I fired a second and a third time, turning half of what remained of my hand into falling ashes, but none of them hit. None of them even got close.
Gritting my teeth from the bombardment of pain I was subjecting myself to, I resorted to using my left hand's fingers instead.
But either because I was starting to reach my limit from all the pain I was subjecting myself to or because he was learning to avoid pinpoint shots that flew at the speed of light, the next shot did worse than many of my previous ones.
He simply rolled to the side and used the rubble of one of the broken pillars as cover.
It wasn't worth using [Light Magic] to pierce through layers of rock to hit him, so instead, I created a dozen ice lances around me and fired them off into the debris pile.
But as the giant icicles flew down towards the ground, something came back my way.
By the time I realized that some small object was flying towards me, it was too late. My ice lances impacted, filling the area around the broken pillar with rock and ice dust and immediately after I felt a little bit of pain coming from my left wing accompanied by the sound of stone breaking.
Looking over at it, there was a hole around the size of my fist in it, along with a hole in the ceiling suggesting the trajectory whatever tore a hole in my wing came from.
While my wing membranes were extremely thin, they did benefit from my high stats, so the power put into that thing that tore through my wing had to have been significant.
From the corner of my eye, there was a flicker of movement.
When I turned my head to find it, a small yet sharp pain came from my wing again.
There was another hole in it, and a second hole in the ceiling accompanying it as well.
The source was obvious, the pile of stones I had just shot my ice into, where that prick of a vampire was hiding behind.
The dust was already dissipating.
Or rather, its been forced to dissipate by the shock waves from the projectiles that came from the middle of it all.
And what was revealed was the figure of that needle dick peeking out from what little remained of the broken pillar and the pile of broken up rocks. His hand was wound back behind his head and he was holding a fist full of rocks.
(Shit!)
I flap hard just as he threw the handful of rocks. The sudden manoeuvre managed to avoid the projectiles, leaving nothing but a few new holes in the ceiling along with some rock dust drifting down from them.
I glanced back at the enemy, but more rocks were already flying towards me. I flapped my wings again, but this time it was too late and accompanying some pain, I got two holes in my right wing.
Receiving this one-sided barrage, I continued to dodge and weave erratically as I did my best to avoid the stone bombardment. My wings were filling up with holes but the ceiling was in even worse shape.
If things continued as it did, the building collapsing was growing to be a real threat. If that happened, then the people below us could be in danger.
Or rather, if the fight became any more furious, then the chances of the lower floor collapsing was a real issue. But it wasn't like I was in a position to really hold back. The most I could do was avoid using high powered AOE attacks which would've been ineffective against such a strong opponent anyways.
Getting frustrated at the one-sided offensive, I pointed a finger and fired off a laser at the damn prick, but he quickly ducked into cover the moment he saw my motion, leaving me with even more pain and one less finger.
I was down to a thumb and two fingers at this point until I got a chance to regenerate my body.
Things weren't looking very good, especially when I glanced at my HP. I was below half now and yet that damn squirrel sausage had only just dipped below 2 million HP, slightly below three quarters his max HP.
The fact that my strongest attacks for this battle reduced my own HP was making things especially tough when I was missing so many of my shots.
I grit my teeth and tried to reduce the guy's cover with another barrage of ice. But as I gathered the mana and crystallized it into ice lances while soaring near the ceiling, he popped his head out and rapid-fired a bunch of rocks, shredding my wings further and getting a solid hit on my belly.
"Kuh!"
That one that got my left kidney especially hurt, but it didn't stop me from launching my attack.
More rocks came but I quickly rolled into a dive and avoided all but one of the missiles as my own attack further reduced his cover into dust.
I readied a finger to fire off another laser the moment the dust cleared and I was sure I head a clear shot when rocks came flying out of the clouds. It wasn't the small handful of rocks, but dozens of them, flying at me in waves.
(Not again!)
Giving up on going back on the offensive, I flapped my wings and rolled to the side again, but the rapid-fired projectiles continued to track my movements and my wings continued to get shredded. A few more rocks hit me in other places, leaving scrapes and bruises.
"Kya!"
A sharp pain came from my left wing arm and suddenly I lost all control over my flight.
When I tried to flap my wings to reorient myself, all I got was pain from my left wing and my body spun even faster until I hit the ground with a sickening crunch.
Thankfully most of the sound was from the stone floor cracking against the impact, but more pain shot up from my left wing.
When I looked to my side as I pushed off the ground, I saw why: the bone in my wing arm had snapped. The wing couldn't hold its shape properly and thus I fell from the imbalance caused from the broken wings.
Healing it would take time, time I didn't have, so instead, I opted to just get rid of my wings.
I quickly disengaged [Alter Silhouette], but pain wracked up from my left thigh unexpectedly.
Looking down, the sight of my bleeding thigh came to view. I had forgotten that I hadn't healed that injury yet and so it returned the moment I released the transformation.
My right arm had turned back into a stump as well, but that wasn't a big deal. Unfortunately my left hand's fingers had stayed as they were, as the other injuries I had incurred outside of my wings.
Perhaps sensing an opportunity, that bastard kicked off with an explosion and rushed my position.
In a panic, I dove to the side, but the pain in my leg caused me to falter and the dodge transitioned into a trip, causing me to land on my side. However, it was enough to avoid being ripped open by that bastard's claws and I quickly scrambled behind the closest pillar.
With no time to lose, I generated and condensed air into an ultra dense ball between me and the pillar, then while hopping back I let it explode. The rapidly expanding air broke the pillar I was hiding behind and shot out its fragments towards that prick.
On the opposing side of the explosion, I was pushed back as well. Unfortunately, the initial shock wave simply passed through my body, wracking it with a burst of pain.
(Note to self: don't do that again.)
I should've known better, but that trick didn't work anything like how it did in any movie I've seen.
But I had achieved my objective, even if it was at the cost of almost a thousand HP.
The flying shrapnel slowed that hornet poker down and I was able to make some distance and time.
I applied some quick healing to my thigh to stop the bleeding, as well as my HP ticking down slowly, then applied [Alter Silhouette] once again to restore my body.
I've been taking too many hits without doing significant damage, so I needed to turn things around soon.
With a quick flap of my wings, I raced across the ground while firing off a sustained barrage of ice lances at that needle dick.
My objective, my magic bag.
My bag had fallen where that damn bastard ripped my robes off, and if I was lucky, it was still undamaged despite everything we've done to this room. But the question was, what to use. I had several weapons and armour pieces, but most of them didn't seem like the kind of things that would be that useful in this fight.
Any ranged weapon wouldn't be nearly as versatile or quick as my magic, regardless of how much power was behind the attacks. Pretty much any melee weapon was out of the picture. That ass had the upper hand in melee, so I wanted to avoid it as much as possible. It was also likely that my claws would be more powerful than anything I had.
In reality, while I wasn't sure how effective it would be, or even how to use it properly, but there was one object I had which could at least help a little.
I reached a hand into the neck of my bag and retrieved a simple stick with a gem on the end before kicking off the ground and avoiding that bastard's claws as he rushed past my position.
It wasn't much, but I hoped that it would give me the edge I needed to win this fight.