The aning behind Angela’s gesture was crystal clear. Angela’s hands said all that was needed: “You’re finished.”
She lowered her hand. She must have fought once already before coming here, yet there wasn’t a scratch on her armor. Either the guards at the detention camp had been weaker than expected, or...
The instant Angela brought her fists together, the shockwave roared out, rocking the entire manor. That power level was far beyond B-rank.
The ground trembled like an earthquake, so much that even seasoned rcenaries staggered for footing. The knights under Frenzy fared even worse—tumbling and flailing helplessly on the shaking floor.
What Angela was showing was indiscriminate power that robbed friend and foe alike of their footing. Only then did Leon understand why she’d volunteered to work alone.
She’s too strong to fight alongside others.
This vibration, it seed, was sothing even Angela couldn’t fully control. If just drawing on her power caused this, then fighting alongside her was all but impossible.
Anyone who wanted to fight on this quaking ground would need Leon or Karen’s level of footwork—and at Level 4 or higher.
Even El-Cid agreed, chuckling, —Kahaha! Incredible! Her Aura attribute is Vibration, huh? A rare variant of the Earth type. In terms of raw destructive force, that’s about as good as it gets!
Vibration?!
Leon’s face hardened. In simple terms, vibration was just movent through oscillation. However, dig deeper, and it was the root of countless physical phenona.
Sound was air vibrating. Heat and shock traveled by vibration too.
—Well, I guess that’s not an exaggeration. If she reaches Master level, she could use it like you’re imagining—control sound and heat directly.She’s not there yet. Right now, she can only keep amplifying and blasting it outward. To refine it to that next level? Ten more years of training for that purpose, at least.
So she can’t beat the Count?
—Huh? What made you reach that conclusion?
Leon’s worry got a dry snort in return. The reason beca obvious the next mont.
Angela, still gathering power, took a single step forward, and in that instant, she crossed ten ters, stomping her foot down on the head of a fallen frenzied knight.
The helt and skull shattered together like a ripe tomato. No matter how berserk a body was, destroy the brain and it was over.
One step. One kill. Angela moved again.
One knight had already been burned to ash by the Black Lightning. Three remained. She could finish them in three more steps at this rate.
Of course, Andrei wasn’t just going to sit idly by.
“Do you think your little tricks will work again?!” he shouted.
A beam of light flared from his palm, wrapping around the three berserkers and forcing them back to their feet, steadying them like puppets. Whatever spell he’d used, he’d brute-forced them upright.
It was dangerous. Three frenzied knights, and each was nearly A-rank in raw power and speed. On top of that, Angela needed to step a lot closer to get within her range than Leon, who wielded a sword.
El-Cid’s voice cut through Leon’s worry.
—Nah. She doesn’t need your help. Look at her. Where does she look disadvantaged to you?
Well, obviously...
Leon’s mouth clamped shut mid-retort because she didn’t. Angela didn’t retreat a single step. She stood firm like a fortress, fists raised, calm as stone. She didn’t look cornered—she looked unshakeable.
“...!”
The berserkers roared together, rushing her in a blind fury. To any bystander, it looked like she was about to be overwheld.
Hal barely managed to loose an arrow, but his footing slipped, sending his arrow an inch too wide. Angela really was alone against three raging monsters.
She then stomped her foot with a broad swing, and the vibration that had rattled the manor fell silent. At that sa instant, her right fist shot forward like a bolt of light.
The berserker’s upper body couldn’t withstand the impact and exploded into mist, spraying gore and bone shards like bloody vapor. A single blow. Instant death.
The room fell silent as mouths hung open. Andrei’s face turned sheet white. How could one person’s punch hit like this?
—Still has two more shots.
“What?!”
Leon’s mutter slipped out before he even realized it. Thankfully, no one heard.
And El-Cid was right, word for word. Her left fist crossed her right, caving in another berserker’s chest like paper. A final, slightly weaker blow smashed the last one’s head to pulp.
Her three consecutive hits were like a battering ram in human form. In an instant, three frenzied knights were gone. Angela stood over the ruin, shoulders rising and falling with steady breaths.
The swirling Aura that had ballooned around her shrank sharply. It seed she’d burned through a massive amount of power.
El-Cid, having understood the chanism of Angela’s power, whistled in Leon’s mind, —Layering vibration after vibration, storing it up, then shaping it into a focused shockwave through her own body. Clever technique.
He seed genuinely impressed, which was rare.
—One slip and the force would rip her insides apart. She needs an iron body, sure—but that mind? That’s more iron than steel.
So it’s that dangerous? Leon asked.
—Imagine channeling your rak directly through your guts instead of your sword. Slip once—
You’d explode...?
—Ding ding. Right again!
Leon fell silent, stunned. Aura at that scale was basically high-grade explosive fuel—if it ruptured inside her, there wouldn’t be enough left to bury. And Angela just did it like it was nothing.
Demian’s voice snapped him back.
“Surrender now, Andrei Rubena!”
Andrei’s eyes narrowed to cold slits as he replied, “Surrender? And why would I do that?”
“You look pathetic, clinging to life like this. You’ve lost your knights, your manor—will you give up your life next?”
“You preach like you’ve already won. Disgusting, Church dog,” Andrei sneered at him and jabbed a finger at the wall behind him. “Or did you forget? I still have one hostage left.”
There, hanging limp, was Karen.
“You an ?” she said.
“Yes, you...uuu?!”
She was right behind him. Like a ghost, Karen stood at his back, having swapped places using a variation of her Shadow Clone skill.
Her dagger plunged straight for Andrei’s neck, dripping with Aura and poison, a single graze enough to kill—but the blade bounced off.
The other ring Andrei wore shattered into pieces again. That was his final lifeline, worth ten thousand gold, gone in an instant.
Karen landed beside Leon with a disgruntled huff, “You’re kidding . He had two of those stupidly expensive things?”
An artifact like that was the stuff only the best assassins saw in their lifeti, rare enough that even a high noble was lucky to own just one.
Andrei had carried two.
“What, you were faking all that? You okay?” Leon asked.
“Nope. The wounds are all real.”
Karen gave a pale smile, chugging down potion after potion from the hidden stash in her bracelet. The blood loss wouldn’t co back, but at least the wounds would seal.
Once her breathing eased a little, she managed a grin and explained, “I really did get roughed up. But I could tell he wasn’t trying to kill right away, so I let him think I’d be a hostage. Then, I stabbed him when he tried to play that card. If not for that insanely strong nun, I’d have done it sooner.”
She giggled, showing the dark stain where her abdon was still seeping blood. Leon, on the other hand, didn’t smile at all.
Instead, he said, “You did well. Now step back and focus on treating yourself.”
“Huh...? Hey, Mr. He—no, Leon, are you mad?”
Leon didn’t answer. There was no need for words. One look at his hardened face, at those razor-sharp eyes, said everything. Realizing it, Karen stepped back—carefully, almost sheepishly.
El-Cid read the tension imdiately.
—It’s not the girl you’re angry at, huh.
Nope.
Leon’s voice in his mind was flat and cold. His eyes flared open.
He wasn’t angry at Karen. He was angry at himself for not catching his comrade’s plan and for letting her bleed so pale right under his nose.
However, that anger didn’t change the fact that her ambush had worked.
“Changed your mind yet about surrendering, Count? Not much ti left to be called that—might want to keep your head attached while you still can.” Demian’s taunt cut through the air, as he mocked, “And it looks like you’ve got guests here with a bone to pick with you too.”
As if on cue, two shadows dropped from the sky, twisting into human form as they landed. A grim, suffocating presence filled the night.
Tepes and Roman, the two vampires who’d been forced to wander the ruins of the city after Andrei’s sches enslaved their clan, were now standing here for retribution.
“It’s ti to pay for your sins, Andrei,” Tepes said as he flicked a crimson blade from his fingertip.
In truth, he wanted to hack him to pieces here and now—but the right to execute heretics belonged first to the Holy Iron Inquisitors.
So he hoped Andrei would refuse to yield. And perhaps that wish was granted.
“Very well, pests.”
Andrei slowly lifted his head, lips curling into a vile grin as he pulled sothing out.
“Is that...!”
Morian. The very black crystal he’d commissioned which the Storm Caravan had hauled into this city. It was flawless when delivered, and it now flickered ominously in his left hand.
That flicker was no trick of the light. Sothing inside the morian pulsed and writhed as if it had heard Andrei’s call.
It all happened too quickly. Without hesitation, Andrei swallowed the crystal whole, sending it sliding down his throat.
Everyone could only stare, stunned.
Did he just...?
“Heh...hehe...”
They didn’t even have ti to react before a sickening shriek of laughter tore from Andrei’s throat.
“Gahahaha!”
Instinctively, those closest clapped their hands over their ears, horror striking them as they felt sothing tear. Within seconds, eardrums ruptured halfway under the assault of that savage, unnatural pitch.
“Urgh?!”
“Dammit—what is that sound?!”
The sound no human ear could withstand, a brutal, monstrous wave that shredded through their skulls, was none other than ultrasound.
And no one was more horrified than the two high-tier vampires.
“No... no way... That technique!”
“The Erzsebet clan...?”
This was the power of the Erzsebet clan, an ancient blood gifted with dominion over sound, and one of the three noble lines of Nosferatu.
As if to confirm their dread, Andrei shrieked down at them from the sky, “Fools! You thought you were the last?! You thought I hadn’t prepared for this day?! I gathered every drop of Nosferatu blood long ago!”
Leon’s grip dampened with sweat as his Aura Sense quivered. Andrei’s presence was ballooning several tis—no, several dozens of tis—swelling into sothing violent, monstrous.
No physical attack had landed, yet Leon felt his breath catching in his chest. Andrei was no longer human.
“I hesitated only because the ritual was incomplete—but you forced my hand! Watch now as I beco the king of this twilight!”
The whites of Andrei’s eyes turned crimson and bloody light spilled from the sockets. Behind him, two pairs of pitch-black wings burst out, stretching wide.
This was the mark of a Lord-tier vampire; power that surpassed a Master’s domain by far.
Overflowing life force turned a sinister shade of red, tainting the very moonlight above, dyeing the sky in blood. The power swelled out, do-like, enveloping the city for kiloters in every direction.
Bloody Moon: the dominion and symbol of the Vampire Lord, ruler above all vampires.
“This land is mine. And so its end shall be mine as well. I will drain every living soul dry and feast on your blood to rise as the new Vampire Lord!”
Andrei—no longer rely a black mage but a monster beyond human—glared down at Leon and the others with blazing scarlet eyes. The sheer pressure pinned their shoulders, a suffocating despair pressing in.
Angela was the first to break free from that fear. She lunged forward and hurled her fist again.
It wasn’t the sa killing blow as before, but the force behind it was ferocious. The shockwave slamd into Andrei’s chest with a loud boom.
His cloak shredded from the blast, his wings beating violently to steady him in the air. However, that was all.
“Pathetic,” Andrei scoffed.
Black Lightning poured from Andrei’s palm, but not just one strike—dozens. Fifth-tier magic rained down like a barrage of magic missiles, blasting the half-ruined manor into utter collapse. Pillars lted and shattered. Beams caved in.
The Rubena House’s ancestral estate, built over generations, crumbled into ruin. By the ti the battered survivors clawed their way free, Andrei was already there, waiting for them.
“Any last words?”
Whether it was arrogance reborn or a mind corrupted by his transformation, Andrei’s grin was pure contempt as he looked down at them.
And then—
“Karen.”
Leon stepped forward three paces ahead, lifting his blade.
“Take Tepes and Roman. Get as far from here as you can.”
A hero always arrived when things were looking the grimst.
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