In a dark part of the forest, at least 50km from the village a light grey arm burst from the ground. Altar peeked his head out and pulled himself out, the red orbs were hanging on the fur covering his body connected by black energy and sword in hand. When he came out he pulled on a black tether that was tied to his foot and a soldier that was tied up was pulled out. Altar looked around and noticed a mountain nearby and ran towards it.

'Where is this vile creature taking me?' the soldier named Grey tried to moved around, but the black energy kept him still, he would scream for help but it was covering his mouth. 'If only I had enough aura to break out of this shit' he tried forcing aura out of his body, but it seemed the rope or whatever he was wrapped around contained it in his body causing some discomfort.

They made it into a cave that Altar found, he dropped the soldier and looked around while sniffing the air. He could smell an animal deeper in the cave, but he didn't need to look far. A deep growl came out of the darkness. Grey got worried when he saw a black panther with six legs, four of them being the forward legs. Altar on the other hand put down the two red orbs that had black energy covering them next to the soldier.

'What the hells are these? And what does he think he's doing, that's a magic beast!' Grey tried to yell at Altar, but Altar ignored his rather annoying muffled yelling.

Altar raised his sword and charged forward, the panther doing the same with its claws. He parried the first paws and allowed the other two to connect, the panther latched on and bit into Altars shoulder. Wasting no time Altar stabbed it in the chest causing it to roar in pain. Before it could back up, Altar slashed down opening it's chest, the panther hit him away with its paws making him fly towards a wall. The panther tried to run away, but Altar had recovered from the hit and cut off its two front legs and its second right leg. It fell to the ground and before it could try to retaliate he cut its back severing its spine. The beast stayed on the ground and couldn't move at all.

'By the Gods' Gray could not hide the shock that was on his face.

Altar walked up to the soldier and picked up the orbs. The soldier sent him questioning looks, curious at what those could be, but Altar wasn't interested in giving him any answers. He sat down with his back against one the the cave walls. He took the smaller orb that was about the size of a tennis ball and put it in his mouth, he swallowed it down in one gulp and began to meditate. After sitting in silence for a few minutes the guards eyes looked in surprise as the man began to radiate a red colour.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

'Aura?! Did he just create an aura core? But how, there was no indicator that the gate had opened?' Gray was just hit with surprise after surprise, fighting captain Arrik on equal grounds and surviving, beating a rank 1 beast in mere moments and gaining aura without opening his body gates, truly a surprising vampire. 'But then again, he could have easily have opened the gate earlier and decided not to create an aura core, but why delay? And what are those red orbs, pills of some kind?' Grey tried to think, but would get no answers.

'It seems my gate didn't close, lucky' Altar looked at the aura around his body in surprise. Rather then eat the bigger orb, he held it in his hands and meditated, the aura in his body surrounded it and it began shrinking. The aura all went to the core located next to his kidney, as it entered and swam around the core, the core expanded. Then aura then traveled around his body to every muscle, bone, vein and even to his blood cells. The cave began to heat up and steam came from his body.

Altar took a deep breath and opened his eyes. He stood up and walked up to the beast.

"What's your name?' he asked.

The black energy covering Greys mouth vanished.

"Are you going to kill me?" he asked.

"That depends if you can answer my questions" Altar replied as he started doing something to the panther outside of Greys view.

"My names Grey" he said.

"Now grey, why did you and the other guards attack me without as much as a question?" Alter asked.

"So you weren't sent by the empire?" Grey asked.

"What empire?" he replied with a question.

"The Borthon Empire"

'Not a name I recognise' Altar thought for a moment but couldn't recall such an empire.

"Where is this empire located?" he asked.

Grey looked at him for a few moments with eyes of confusion.

"Are you serious? It's not like its a secret" Grey replied sarcastically.

"I'm not from around these parts?" Altar said.

"What? To the planet?" grey said keeping back a laugh.

"Maybe, hard to say whether I've been put on this world by a friend or landed here after surviving what I thought was my permanent end, or the more likely option that I've been asleep for a long enough time so my body healed the damage from the attack" Altar said.

Grey looked at him with confused eyes.

"But that doesn't matter give me as much information as you can while I'm doing this" Altar said.

To be continued...