“Silvia!” Mark screamed in desperation.
All logic left his body as he watched his wife collapse. Blood spurted in all directions, and the fear of losing her made Mark stride forward. He lifted his heavy blade high into the air and slashed at the Lesser Succubus before him.
The Lesser Succubus didn’t grace Silvia with a single glance. She pushed to the side and vanished into a burst of smog. A quarter of a second later, the Lesser Succubus appeared next to Leyla. The Succubus licked her lower lip in excitement and attacked. Her claws flashed crimson and thrust forward ruthlessly.
Leyla could barely react in time. She lifted her bow to block the initial blow, only to realize that her bow was cut into several pieces. The Succubus’ blood-shrouded claws cut through her bow like a hot knife through butter before initiating a follow-up attack immediately. The first attack didn’t injure Leyla, but the second inflicted deep cuts all over her chest.
Leyla’s eyes widened as she was about to use several Cards to block the Succubus’ attack, but none activated. A fountain of blood spurted out of her, and she collapsed to the ground right beside Silvia.
Mark barely reached his wife to check if she was still alive when Leyla collapsed. His eyes were filled with fury as he turned to face his enemy. He would much rather tend to his wife and Leyla’s wounds, but the Lesser Succubus would kill him before he could retrieve a potion. Mark had to get rid of her before the situation worsened.
“Oh my gosh!” Linsey exclaimed from nearby. She and Pauline had been fighting just outside the hut when they heard Leyla and Mark’s screams. They rushed over as fast as they could without getting sucked dry by the Lesser Vampires or ripped into shreds by the Ghouls.
The ghouls slouched forward while moving on all fours, their vicious claws extended to tear through flesh and bone alike. Thick, gooey saliva dripped down their mouth, filled with oddly misshapen, zig-zagged teeth. On the other hand, the Lesser Vampires walked or seemed to glide above the ground and had their hungry eyes fixated on the humans, licking their dry lips in anticipation. The two groups slowly advanced while trying to corner Linsey and Pauline, who were both looking around with a terrified expression. They feared their time had come. Meanwhile, the Lesser Succubus watched in anticipation as her fledglings began to play the cat-and-mouse game with the two girls. The devilish woman was delighted with the two preys she had found for herself, but the more, the merrier.
Pauline suddenly tried to dash to the side, but one of the ghouls leaped at her, making her retreat into the corner again.
The Lesser Succubus hissed and looked at the Lesser Vampires and Ghouls angrily only for a second. However, that was enough for her plan to receive another setback.
A young man with brown sandy hair glimmered golden in the afternoon, and ice-cold emerald eyes appeared a few meters before her. The Succubus didn’t even notice his arrival, but he didn’t seem dangerous at first glance.
That feeling changed at once when the young man’s eyes fell upon the weakly twitching bodies of the two women she’d injured a few seconds ago.
The hair all over the Succubus’ body stood on its end as Xavier looked back at her. He didn’t utter a single noise, but the sensation of death crawled up her spine. Massive, leathery wings unfolded from her back, and she flapped them at once while kicking the ground hard to increase the distance from Xavier.
The young man’s Foundation was weaker than hers, but the Succubus was sure she would die the moment she lowered her guards.
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Xavier, on the other hand, thought nothing. His mind was blank at this moment. The world around him turned crimson slowly as the darkness inside him spread explosively through his entire being. Tendrils of utter darkness pierced his skin to coat his body in a dark membrane.
The membrane slowly expanded, moving and twitching like a restless being. Darkness oozed out of it as if it had absorbed every last ray of light, and the membrane began to spread all over his body, creating a strong, dark armor. Xavier’s wrath fueled the armor, or maybe the darkness made him angry like never before. The sight of his mother covered in blood and her pale body discarded in the corner like trash unleashed fury from the pits of his heart. The darkness membrane seemed to understand his need for blood and continued to coat his body like a second skin while he clenched his fists. On one hand, he held the Onyx Blade’s hilt hard enough to make the hilt crack under the pressure as his eyes turned into a storm of rage and the need for revenge.
The darkness seeped into the cracks, filling it all along and cementing the gaps. The woman continued to flap her bat-like wings hard and rise in the air as the darkness rose to Xavier’s neck and the armor formed completely, leaving his face and neck untouched.
The Lesser Succubus had not seen anything like that. It was dark and eerie, but she felt no affinity to the darkness or the human it had chosen to embrace. All she felt was an urgent need to run for her life, abandoning the Ghouls and Lesser Vampires to their fate. She could start over again later.
But Xavier was not going to let that happen. He fixed his gaze on her, staring right into her beady eyes. And suddenly, she felt as if she could not run away, could not hide. It was as if she was suspended in a limbo. The threads that remained inside Xavier merged into his skin and cells. His vibrant emerald eyes were swallowed in darkness as his vision turned crimson.
However, Lesser Succubus was not the only one who was shocked to the core. Even Linsey and Pauline were staring at him with their mouths hanging open. His appearance was nothing short of a devil, and they feared that he had lost his sanity. They were not sure if this was a Card’s ability or some manifestation of evil, but they felt afraid of him for the first time.
And that was natural. He looked nothing like the Xavier they knew. For a moment, everybody just stopped doing whatever they were, forgetting they were in a battle and staring at him with morbid curiosity. Xavier’s gaze flitted to Linsey for a moment, and she swallowed hard. She feared he had locked his eyes with her and deemed her his next target. Her brain sent warning signals to her mouth to trigger the fight or flight response, but she was paralyzed with shock.
He looked so cold, unapproachable...deadly… But her fear had been for naught.
Xavier vanished and reappeared behind the Lesser Succubus a quarter of a second later. She tried to respond early enough, but Xavier had already grasped one of her wings with an iron-tight grasp. The Onyx Blade slashed through the air, and the Succubus screamed at the top of her lungs.
Dark blood oozed out of her as one of her wings was viciously torn. The other wing was still in Xavier’s steely grip, but desperation took control of the Succubus. She tried to pull away from Xavier, struggling like a trapped butterfly. Her wing hurt, but she pushed further in the opposite direction. Her scream grew louder as a loud tearing noise reached everybody’s ears. The Succubus was about to tear her wing off to escape Xavier.
But before she could escape Xavier’s grasp, tendrils of darkness flowed out of Xavier. They coiled around her wing and limbs, restraining the Succubus, whose expression morphed into utter horror as she realized what was about to happen.
“How are you here?!” She screamed at the top of her lungs.
That was all she could say before the extended Onyx Blade pierced through her chest.
Darkness flowed through the Onyx Blade and invaded the Succubus’ body. And it was as if time began to move backward for her. Her young, plump skin began to turn wrinkly and dry while the luscious locks on her head thinned. She looked at her body and struggled in vain as darkness began to devour her from the inside. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound except a weak whimper escaped her as she went from being an otherworldly beauty to an old, sickly woman before her body disintegrated completely.
Lesser Succubus(Superior – Mutant) has been slain with a major contribution.
+32 Soul Essence, +5 Rare Card Shards, +1 Epic Card Shard.