Old Chapter 32/ interlude

NON OF THIS IS CANON. JUST A FUN SIDE READ OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN.

Chapter 32

As they entered the throne room, they found a man with long midnight black hair, and the pale skin of the monsters they had killed before.

The most striking feature of his appearance was his ruby-red eyes. They seemed to glow with a physical light.

The man didn’t have the exaggerated emotions of the others. He sat calmly and drank from a wine glass. It was hard to tell from their vantage point, but the man seemed to be drinking actual wine instead of blood.

The man said something in the gibberish the others had spoken. Seeing that they didn’t understand, he waved a hand, and a blonde woman appeared from the shadows. She came bearing a platter with a single wine goblet.

The man on the throne took the full goblet and swapping it out with his empty one. Matt took the opportunity to check behind him, and saw the glowing rift exit. This was clearly the boss that no one else had seen.

A sudden blur of motion snapped Matt’s attention back to the sitting man. The server woman had her head ripped off in the brief second that he had looked away.

With the corpse at his feet, the man took a careful sip of the wine. With a wave of a single finger, the blood Liz collected traveled over to him.

“Fuck, he took complete control of it.” There was panic in her voice.

Matt started to panic. They needed to leave now.

“We need to retreat. Go for the entrance or the exit?”

The question remained unanswered, as the man dipped his finger in the blood, bringing it to his mouth. Fangs bared, he delicately licked his finger clean.

“Ahh. There we go. So this is your language. I have questions before you go.”

Matt's panic turned to horror. He gripped his sword and started to retreat to the door behind him. Liz and Aster didn’t need any prompting to follow. Monsters should not be speaking The Empire’s common tongue. Something was wrong, and all they knew was that they needed to get out of there. Quickly.

“No. No. No. don’t leave yet.”

The door slammed shut, and he heard Liz pulling hard.

“I can’t open it.”

Matt knew then that they were dead.

The monster looked down at the blonde he had decapitated, “Funny, how the circumstances of one’s existence unfold, isn’t it? She was never a vampire. She was a loyal human. She didn’t deserve this fate. Nor did the others. Why is there a town that should exist filled with the dead? They started dead. Not a single normal human. Only ghouls and vampires. I killed every other vampire. I know I did. Where did these come from? They aren't of my line. No connection at all. So bizarre.”

The man looked at his nail. “And this rage. Why was I under a compulsion to kill you? So. Very. Interesting.”

The man looked from Matt to Liz. When he saw the armored blood mage, he smiled. It was a genuine smile, only made creepier by his large incisors poking through.

“Child of the blood. You are connected to the life liquid. But you are not any of the kin that I know of.”

Liz didn’t respond and tightened her grip on her spear.

The silence increased the tension until Liz broke it and asked, “How did you learn our language from the blood? And why are you not attacking? You said you felt the madness. You should be like the others, and trying to murder everything.”

The man smiled and said, “Ahhh, wonderful. We have communication. Please, forgive my rudeness. Call me Vlad, of the once-proud line of an order of knights. Let’s work backwards. I was able to quash the little compulsion. I’ve spent more years than I can remember fighting far stronger urges. This little slip up was simply a moment of hunger. Nothing more. And learning from blood is what I do. You could call it a…  side effect.”

Liz clearly was better at handling the stress of their impossible situation, as she asked, “What are you? And how do you know that you’re the last of your kind?”

Vlad smiled and laughed, “Because I made it so of course. Me, I’m the last vampire. I killed the one who made me, and worked my way up the entire line. Then I found the gods and begged them to end me. They denied my desire and laughed at me. So I ate them. Now I’ve spent the last few millennia trying to die. As to how I know for sure that I’m the last? I can feel the presence of the kin, even those not of my line. I removed them all. Which brings us here. This is like a fever dream of a place that once existed. So strange.”

Matt heard Liz swallow audibly. The boss grinned, but quickly covered it with a swig of wine. Matt thought he heard it as well.

After clearing her throat, Liz squeaked out. “Any chance you’ll let us leave?”

“If you answer my questions, sure.”

“We can’t do that. If you got language from my blood, you should have been able to get other memories. Anything I tell you would be redundant.”

“Ahh, my dear. Clever. But whatever that blood was, it wasn’t your blood. Not your true blood, at least. Some artificial construct it seems. Novel, but clearly not like a true drink.”

He stood up, and Matt backed up in response, pressing into Liz and feeling Aster at his feet.

Now that he was standing Matt was able to get a good impression of this man, Vlad. No, this vampire. He was tall. Even with Matt’s imposing height of 6’4”, the vampire was at least an inch taller. He seemed slim, so Matt hoped that he would have the physical advantage.

“Let’s do this like civilized men and women. A friendly fight. If I win, you answer my questions to the best of your abilities. In return, I promise that if I lose, I will set you free and not interfere with your leaving. “He spread his arms, asking, “Fair?”

Matt quickly thought it over and saw a trap, so he spoke up, “What are the conditions?”

The pale man nodded, the slightest hint of a smirk flashing across his pale face. “Good question young man. Let’s go with... First blood for me, and my death for you. I truly have no desire to harm any of you. But I do want answers, and have found that impressing the futility of the situation upon my opponents is a good starting point for getting what I want.”

Matt asked, “You aren’t afraid to die?”

“Oh goodness no, not at all. I would love for you to end me. Sadly, I’m far too strong for that. Even the removal of my head and heart would do nothing.”

Seeing no way out, Matt stepped forward. He was their best shot, as the man had already shown he could wrestle control of Liz’s blood.

With His AI predicting every move, 9 MPS pouring into [Cracked Phantom Armor], and 7 MPS into [Mage’s Retreat], Matt was as buffed as he could be.

The man drew a sword from the area behind him. Matt saw that he was in simple plate armor. The set seemed to be more for show rather than practical, but he decided to treat it like true armor.

Matt started the fight by testing the vampire’s assertion that he was unkillable. He lowered the feed into [Mage’s Retreat], and started filling his sword with mana. If he could last five minutes while channeling [Mana Charge], he might be able to end this fight with 1500 mana unleashed in a single blast.

Lashing out, Matt began to test the vampire. Vlad  stopped his blow dead in its tracks with his own sword. It was a near mirror to his own. Just the slightest bit thinner and a hair shorter.

He was shocked at the feeling of hitting a wall, even with the boost to Tier 5 strength from [Mage’s Retreat]. His blow should not have been blocked so absolutely by anything in a Tier 5 rift.

They traded blows for a moment, with Vlad obviously not pressing. Matt’s every blow was intercepted and stopped seemingly without any effort.

Resorting to something he almost never had to, Matt turned the predictive capabilities of his AI to their max. The vampire’s predicted moves were now ghostly overlays that showed Matt what he needed to do.

Pushing away a parry, Matt brought his sword up, and it clanged against the vampire’s bracer. It didn’t cut through, but it did give him vital information. The man’s armor was quality, so he’d have to hit a joint, or attack the uncovered head to deal any damage.

Liz, seeing that the vampire had his back turned, tried to lunge with her spear at his exposed neck. She wanted to put his assertion that decapitation wouldn’t kill him to the test.

Without turning, the man gripped the blade of the spear. Not a drop of blood appeared, and he drove the butt of the weapon into Liz’s gut. The blow dropped the girl, and Matt heard retching.

“Please don’t interfere. I’m enjoying this fight with the young man. My dear boy, you are quite good. Do you come from a clan of warriors? Your skill with a blade is far better than most at your age. Perhaps  you travel from war to war? A mercenary of some sort?”

Matt answered with a blow that nearly struck the vampire’s exposed face.

If Liz’s weapon couldn’t cut him, my best chance is with [Mana Charge]. I need to hold on, and build as much mana as I can handle.

Not bothering with the small talk, Matt followed the ghostly images from his AI, and tried to avoid Vlad’s blade.

It was the hardest fight of his life. The vampire wasn’t even using proper footwork or technique, but his blade moved as if it was magnetically attracted to his weak spots. Each blow was struck with the perfect amount of power necessary to destabilize [Cracked Phantom Armor], but not completely remove the skill.

Matt didn’t want to admit it, but the man was worlds better as a practitioner of the blade. Vlad was guiding him into refining his own style, and punishing weak or vulnerable spots like a teacher.

It frustrated him to be treated like a child by this rift creation that fancied itself was something else.

Matt refocused, and sunk into a dance with his blade. He didn’t usually fight with sword forms; they made a fighter predictable. Of course, they had their uses, but he had evolved past any need for them. The freeform style he now used changed with  his opponent, and always reacted with the appropriate counter or dodge.

Matt leaped forward with a slashing attack, stopping midway through to revise his grip and drive the blade forward with a reverse thrust. The pale man had already stepped back to avoid the feint, and began to lash out in response.

Despite his AI  showing him every move that Vlad was about to make, he couldn’t actually do anything with the information. The vampire outmatched him in every way. It was infuriating. He was like an inevitable force of nature.

With desperation driving his strikes, Matt pushed into more and more reckless attacks. Vlad never capitalized on the openings, instead just tapping his blade against his armor.

The fight dragged on, and Matt saw his moment once the man looked distracted. With the fire of battle driving him, he had finally reached the five minute mark. Sword glowing with the 1500 mana stored in [Mana Charge], he used his ring’s teleport function to blink a foot to the right, avoiding the vampire’s slashing sword.

The Tier 5 longsword crashed down on the inky black tresses adorning the vampire’s head.

Through the bright flash of light, Matt felt the lessening of resistance, and knew he had won.

When the light cleared, Matt only saw a standing pair of legs and a single hand. The one holding the sword was on the floor.

“Ha. We did...”

The mangled corpse snatched Matt’s wrist, and the half-destroyed vampire spun and tossed Matt to the far wall.

As he was flying sideways, he had enough time to see the horrified look on Liz’s now uncovered face.

Matt was puzzled as he slammed into the wall.. The monster had thrown him with the exact amount of force needed for [Cracked Phantom Armor] to be destroyed, and for the momentum of the throw to be cancelled out.

The skill structure recovered in time for Matt to activate it before he hit the ground, so he didn’t take any pain at all.

He’s toying with me. I have no chance against this monstrosity. But I have to do something. Anything.

Standing, he found his sword halfway between the two. As he approached, he was stopped by the vampire.

The vampire only consisted of legs and a small strip of flesh keeping his left arm attached. The rest of his chest was missing, but as Matt watched, Vlad’s body bubbled and regrew. The blood and flesh on the floor did not reform his body. The tissue simply regrew, and in moments, the smiling vampire was standing there, good as new. Not a single indication that he had been missing most of his upper half remained.

“Ahh, an excellent duel. But I’d call that your loss”. With that, the vampire disappeared, and instantly reappeared in front of Matt. His own sword was presented to the stunned delver, pommel first.

Matt couldn’t argue, he may have gotten the hit in, but it was obvious that the vampire had let him. With the speed and durability he showed, Vlad could have ended it at any moment he chose.

As Matt nodded, the vampire’s armor grew and reformed around him. The flesh and blood on the floor was now absorbed through a foot that stepped into the puddle. Matt trembled. This boss could kill them at any moment. They were going to die.

The dark haired man waved his hand, and Matt felt a pressure in his head.

He looked to Liz and said, “Ugh. That chick sure put up a fight, but not enough to be the boss. I guess there really isn’t a boss in this rift.”

Liz nodded. “Yeah. Fuck, that hit to my gut really hurt. I’ve gotten too used to not taking hits.”

Matt didn’t take it as an insult. They had simply let their guard down. “Well, something to work on. Let’s get out of this dump.”

Liz nodded, and they collected the rift reward. Just two mana stones. They were Tier 5 mana stones, but it was still a very below average reward.

Stretching, Matt cracked his back, and they exited the rift.

They got back to their tent pretty late at night, and decided to call it a night. As they turned in, he looked over at Liz and said, “I don’t think it’s worth doing that rift anymore. The essence is great, but even a bit of Tier 5 essence is enough to help out the foundation. We should be able to get enough in a few weeks after leaving the training world.”

Liz popped a headache pill and gave one each to him and Aster. They all had headaches after the rift. The stress must have been worse than usual.

“Yeah, no rush. Hitting the peak of Tier 4 a week earlier or later is no real big deal. We can try and get up to peak Tier 4 before we leave. The real question is whether or not we want to participate in the brawl at the end of the training event.”

***

The pull had been different, a flavor that Vlad had never tasted before.

Embracing it and following the power, he went to find the wizard dumb enough to summon him.

What he found was… Odd. A false world with kin.

His first reaction was to slaughter everyone, as he had done to every vampire on his last homeworld.

When he arrived in this small pocket world, he felt the influence. It was an urge to rampage, and murder any intruders. Vlad had crushed it, and debated crushing the entire realm around him with it. If he was lucky, maybe he would finally die.

As unlikely as that would be, it would be the best outcome. The one he had been searching for millennia for.

So he waited.

The impulse implied others would come, and Vlad had nothing better to do while waiting for something able to kill him. The first three years were boring, with nothing to do but kill the other kin and watch the mechanisms of this pocket world recreate them.

There was something extra here. Some new power that the kin had, but the rules of this little pocket world prevented him from absorbing that energy.

When the first intruders arrived, he appeared behind them and searched the area they had emerged from. After a careful inspection with all of his powers, he found nothing. Truly a new marvel. Something new after all these empty years.

Standing behind the group, he heard them talk.

A new language? How novel.

Vlad hadn’t encountered anything new in so long. He was growing curious.

With an effort of will, he scoured the group of five’s minds. He learned so many new things. A new language, and powers unlike any he had encountered in his roaming of the five worlds.

The new energy was essence according to these children, and this pocket space was a rift.

And the powers! Vlad salivated, praying to the very gods he had slaughtered that these people of world shattering power were real. They might be able to give him release.

He placed a mind blank on each of the children. It would make the full wipe easier at the end. As he walked behind them, he watched as they slaughtered the ghouls and kin. He watched them absorb the essence and distribute it in their souls.

Or spirits, as they called them. The oddest part was that each person’s spirit was subtly different. Unlike the humans he knew, these had powers granted by their uniqueness. He reviewed the memories he had stolen for more information.

Talents!

So many oddities. Vlad intended to follow these children out of this trap.

He watched them slaughter their way through the rift with magic and might. For children this young, he was mildly impressed that they had such an odd culture. He was still chewing on the memories, but culture was low on his list of priorities.

Watching them cut through the monsters, he observed intently as they ‘cultivated’, disrupting the energy they had taken from the fallen.

As they reached ‘his’ throne room, he watched them kill Anna. Seeing her sent fury through his veins.

How dare this rift turn his beloved servant into a kin? That had always been her one request of him, that he never turn her. He had honored that request, even as she lay in her bed and breathed her last.

He checked his nails, and debated killing these children for the audacity of hurting her. But he controlled himself. This wasn’t what she wanted. She had asked to die human, and this false world had disrespected that. So, he let them end her false existence. Watching her rampage with the hate the rift had instilled in her unsettled him. This wasn’t her.

As the children went to the back of the throne room, he watched them push power into an empty space, and out tumbled items.

It wasn’t enough for the children, as they grumbled about how weak the ‘boss’ was. Vlad smiled. They should be grateful he didn’t show himself.

As they walked to another empty space behind the ostentatious throne, he followed, intending to exit.

He walked through the same space they had disappeared through, but remained trapped in this false world. He was glad that the start of the mind wipe would make their memories hazy, and spent his time trying to find the exit the kids had walked through.

In his downtime, he reviewed the memories, and learned of other immortals. They possessed magic of the mind and body he had never even heard of.

He wanted OUT.

He watched as more children entered. Some were from a different political entity, a Republic. How quaint. From these new memories, he laughed at the audacity of their leaders to have power limit political rises. They controlled the voting, and the people loved them.

At least the other entity had a proper Emperor. They didn’t put on a false pretense of fairness.

As time passed, Vlad was in no rush to leave. But as group after group left, he became increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress in finding the exit.

He was making more headway on the exit than the entrance, but the time of abundant numbers of children entering would end soon. He wanted out before the next ten year lapse in visitors this pocket world would have.

A part of him still wondered at the extravagance of having a world just for training children.

Then she came.

As the training period came to an end, Vlad sensed something promising from the newest group of children. This one had a blood user.

Vlad’s hands were circling her neck before they had even gotten their bearings. He would not allow kin to survive.

Now standing just a hair away from her, he got a better smell, and found that she wasn’t kin. She was something else.

He had already learned of humans with beast ancestry, but this young lady smelled of oven roasted blood. With just a hint of cinnamon and cinder.

He wanted to drink. But, Vlad controlled himself. He wasn’t a beast like his younger kin. And this girl could be his way out. Her blood practically screamed to him with its power. He calmly waited for her to bleed so he could get a sample.

The boy with her was a competent swordsman, and eagerly protected his friends. How annoying.

The trio were weaker than most of the children who came, and he watched them struggle. Then, the little fox tried to use one of the ‘skills’ to eat the heart of the kin. He had to hard wipe the entire group, then enspell them to forget that ability.

Vlad didn’t know what would happen, but didn’t want the kin to spread.

It was an interesting skill, but Vlad still didn’t read their memories. He doubted that they knew anything more than the first few dozen people. He just needed the girl to bleed so he could get a drop of her blood.

Watching the group kill was interesting. He had learned enough by now to know that the boy maintaining an armor skill with magic for that long was unusual. The fox with them was also quite interesting. A fox that was intelligent and used ice magic. Novel.

The girl grabbed his attention. She controlled and created blood. It had taken him a long time to reach that level of control with life’s liquid. She didn’t use it to its true potential, but it was abusive to watch her whip an armored ghoul to death.

They tried to leave, but he wouldn’t allow that. He had far more practice with the exit, so he needed them to advance to the end. He disrupted each attempt to leave.

Thus, Vlad continued to watch them push on.

Sitting above the kids, he watched them loot the linen closet and rest. Amusing.

The girl refused to bleed, even up to the bridge to his throne room. She hadn’t spilled a single drop of her real blood.

Vlad decided to put on a show, and force the girl to bleed.

Of course, as soon as he did, the girl cut herself to produce more blood. So, he grabbed control of it, and put on a show of drinking her blood to ‘learn their language’. Long ago, he learned that giving someone a reason for information, even if it was hard to believe and otherwise absurd, was more accepted than the pure unknown.

With part one completed, he contemplated just overpowering the kids, and putting a drop of blood on her to complete the link. In the end, he decided to have a bit of sport. The boy had shown skill, and he wanted to test the extent of his abilities.

If he was being honest with himself, he truly just wanted to have a bit of fun.

After dueling, Vlad changed his opinion of the boy. He was a natural with the longsword. An odd choice, as it was usually a sidearm for the knights of his worlds, but this child danced with it.

The perfect moment came when the girl tried to end him with her spear. He let a single drop of blood leak from his hand, and slowly made it work its way up the spear. He was sure to be as deliberate as possible; he wasn’t going to ruin his plan by rushing.

He wasn’t sure if the girl could sense a drop of blood smaller than most could see. But still, he made sure to hit her hard enough to keep her distracted.

He dueled with the boy a while longer. He was going to wipe the memory, but the child’s body might remember a small bit of the lesson. He had seen it before.

The power in the blade piqued Vlad’s interest, so he let the boy land the blow. The ability to teleport was interesting, and the blade did a surprising amount of damage. It Completely destroyed his upper body. A novel experience, but he had moved his blood next to the girl’s skin and was done with this charade.

He tossed the boy out, finished the mind wipe, and then watched them collect their ‘reward’ before they left.

Vlad had tried leaving a small drop of his blood on others, but they were so weak that he couldn’t feel the blood. He had tried this before, but was unwilling to leave enough blood that  could create a kin if absorbed.

They left, and he finally felt it.

The combination of her powerful blood and his own allowed him to feel the outside, and Vlad pulled to his blood. Just as he had entered this rift, he left. As he left, he used all his powers to shred the realm behind him. He didn’t want a kin to escape.

Standing in the cold under a new sun, Vlad took a deep breath. This sun did nothing to suppress his powers as it had when he was young, but this was new.

With an effort, he pulled his drop of blood back into himself, and made a note that he owed the girl a favor.

Spreading his senses out, he encountered the planet and felt the powerful people in the twin cities on the lake.

He’d visit there soon, but for now, he felt at the essence, and it heeded his call. He could absorb it, and could feel his soul’s desire to do exactly that. He stopped the foreign power, and searched for a weaker rift.

From what he had gleaned from the minds of the first groups, he needed Tier 1 essence to awaken his soul. Spirit, he corrected himself. Using the proper nomenclature was always a good way to mix in with the locals.

Walking through a shadow cast by the cragged landscape, he moved to a weak rift.

Once inside, he took a deep breath and found a creature. It was a disgusting little mongrel of a rabid wolf. But as he snapped its neck, he felt the essence rushing into him.

It touched his spirit and changed him. He debated stopping it, but he allowed the process to unfold. Best case, it would kill him.

Unlikely, but he could hope.

He felt the change take hold. Something was different.

Mentally examining himself, Vlad suppressed the desire to impale himself. Whatever the change was, it felt as if it would be even harder to die now. His blood boiled with power that his curse wasn’t responsible for.

This was different.

The Talents.

Coming to this world suddenly felt like a far worse idea.

I should have expected it, but how bad could my luck get?

Stepping out of the rift, he decided to explore. This Empire allowed for rift break monsters to get full citizenship.

How novel.