With a thrust of my right hand a sword made entirely of earth shot forwards towards a target dummy I made from the nearby dirt. The sword punched right through the dirt and only stopped when it reached the hilt, only a moment after that it shot right back to my side.
I looked at the sword and back to the hole that it left in the dummy and smiled. ‘This will definitely be enough to turn the tides of the fight against the vampire Darius. The only problem I think I will be facing is how quickly he moves about, but I am certain that I can come up with something to slow him down enough. Otherwise I will just get the paladins to help me.’
Raising my left hand up from my waist I raised up five more targets and gave a wide swipe with my right, the conjured sword followed my right hand and made a wide sweeping strike and left deep cuts on each of the targets that led to some sagging as the dirt near the cut lost a good portion of its structural stability and fell apart.
Again I started casting the spell wanting to see how another type of weapon would fare, the process of casting the Free Handed Earth Weapon spell took around twelve whole seconds, double as much as a tier two spell. The spell also used up twelve units of mana which was also double that of a tier two spell.
When the spell was halfway through the casting process I could feel it asking for input as to what it needed to do, it was something that I haven't really felt in a spell until recently but it made sense as it was a multipurpose spell. Instead of giving it the form of a sword like I did before I instead gave it the form of a spear.
Before me the earth was conjured from the accumulated mana and rapidly molded itself into the shape I gave it through the temporary connection during the spell casting. When the spear was finished I floated over towards my left shoulder while the sword floated over my right. I could feel each one was instinctually connected to each arm like a part of me.
Thrusting my left arm forwards like a snake striking at its prey, the spear floating above it shot forwards to what remained of a nearby target and left a hole as it passed through before just as quickly returning through the very same hole it created.
Continued experimentation with the spell resulted in each conjured weapon lasting around five minutes before they would crack and fall apart piece by piece like some sort of puzzle. I ended up casting the spell around five more times each time creating a different weapon, unfortunately the effectiveness of the weapon was dependent on my actual knowledge of the weapons structure and shape. As such the maces, axes, and hammers I tried creating weren’t quite as effective as the sword or spears.
When I finished casting the spell a fifth time something clicked in my mind, like I was missing something very crucial and I only then found it. I stood in the same spot for a while wondering what was going through my mind.
/- - - - - -\
+ Geomancy Level 21
\- - - - - -/
The notification sprung up telling me of the improvement, yet I paid it very little attention. I knew it was related but I instead followed the feeling and it led me back towards the first tier one geomancy spell I learnt, Tri Earth Bolt. I collected the mana within myself to cast the spell and extended my hands to cast it when suddenly the three bolts suddenly manifested in front of me while consuming two of the accumulated units of mana.
The three bolts hovered in front of me no different than if I casted the spell like I normally had. I tried again to collect the mana and I found that I could almost instantly cast the spell, there was a small delay due to collecting and shaping the necessary mana to cast the spell but it worked.
For a while I just stood there on the northern edge of the Pelcester forest confused and excited at my sudden discovery. ‘If I can cast all the tier one spells I know so quickly then I can cast a spell that can disable or restrain someone basically instantly with little exposure. That was the main reason why I chose to only use directly offensive spells and just manipulation for anything else.’
My heart started to beat in excitement at the possibilities in my mind. I knew of a few spells that I never really had a chance to use in real combat because of the casting time which made it more effective to just cast a direct damage spell and kill my target instead of just restraining them.
Like before I manipulated the nearby earth to create a human sized dummy, then I started casting a geomancy spell I hadn't found much use in due to the cast time it required when I could just conjure up earth bolts. Slowly collecting the mana within myself I extended my hands forwards and only just began the movements required to cast the spell in question when the mana escaped from my grasp and conjured up a vine like coil around the dummy.
The earth vine coiled tightly around the dummy’s lower half and would easily prevent any normal person from moving. I was breathing heavily as my heart was slowing down. ‘This is incredible. I need to talk with someone about this, I can’t be the only person that can do this.’
With a big grin on my face I turned and started running back towards the city from the forest, in the sky I could see the sun was almost directly upwards indicating that it was almost noon.
********
I reached the city gates in good time from the south and made my way to the western district. Passing through the southern district was an odd experience, I had first hand experience at how things could improve with a proper leader running things. But now all I saw was desperate people surrounded by thieves and criminals and I could do nothing to help them in the long run.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
I stopped the occasional thief who made the mistake of committing a crime while I was close by, but other than that I could feel the aura of fear within the district. It radiated off the people who lived here, even some of the criminals had the same look of fear in their eyes.
I recalled the words of Captain Tasius during our first meeting. “My predecessor was quite corrupt and used the money that should have been used for upkeep of the building for his own personal uses. Since you exposed that cult of vampires their allied thieves guild Misery's End was taken out with them, and he was exposed as an ally of theirs, helping them cover up their crimes or if that wasn’t possible belittling their impact and hindering the investigation.”
‘I need to destroy the vampire cult and allow for the investigators to discover and remove the current captain of the southern district from the position he currently has. But the last time I fought against the self-proclaimed vampire lord things got close, I need to study and learn more spells and perhaps even get the help of the paladin that killed him last time.’
********
“Oh, welcome back Arthur. Looking for more geomancy spells? It's only been two days since you were accepted into the guild, perhaps you should try taking a break every so often.” The librarian of the mages guild Mrs. Florens smiled as she saw Arthur enter the library again.
“Good after noon Mrs. Florens, actually I am looking into something else right now. Do you know of any books that have information about vampires?”
The soft smile on Mrs. Florens face quickly faded into one of worry and dissatisfaction with Arthur’s question. “I do know of a few that I can point you to. But may I ask why you are looking into such information? Vampires are very dangerous creatures of the night and even though they still retain their consciousness after their transformation they are not the people they were before. As such I hope this is simply a curiosity of yours.”
“Don’t worry, I have no intentions to go around hunting down vampires. It's just that I heard a few things about vampires that sounded quite interesting, one of those was that vampires don’t need to breathe air to live.” Arthur said mixing a lie with a partial truth hoping that the kind librarian wouldn’t be able to tell which was which.
“Well whoever told you that was telling the truth, vampires don’t need to breathe but most do so out of habit. Just promise me that you won’t do anything ridiculous with the information you acquire, we have enough fools that are happy to throw their lives away over silly ideas like hunting down a group of ten plus vampires in their own lair while thinking it is a good idea.”
Something deep down in Arthur’s soul told him that what the elderly librarian was telling him wasn’t just an exaggeration. But he still inquired about the book in question and received the names and their approximate locations within the library.
“The first book is titled Magical Beasts and Where They Come From. It will cover the basics of most magical creatures from werebeasts to gnomes to even some of the the weaker fey, you should be able to get some good information regarding how they act and how they are created. The second book is A Beast Hunters Guild To Vampires. This one will go over how to actually prepare against and how to easily slay a vampire, as your superior within the guild I recommend you avoid this one if it is just a simple curiosity like you said.”
********
Looking through the library I found both books located within the open section of the library where anyone could look for information. It was pretty logical as I would occasionally see someone who wasn’t a part of the guild looking through that part of the library.
I decided to start with Magical Beasts and Where They Come From, the book was rather thick as it covered easily one hundred creatures just from a quick glance while I flipped through. The section regarding vampires was located on page fifty three right after the page covering necromancers which I thought was a little odd.
Vampires are a specific type of undead that are created by either a curse from desecrating a temple or shine of a god or by allowing a vampire that already exists to turn them. Vampires as undead have greater physical capabilities than as mortals, improved magical affinities, no longer need for food, drink, or breathing and often lose most of their normal emotions acting more like animals. This becomes especially apparent when they are starved of blood, their primary source of food for several days. Their physical bodies will shrivel up like dried meat until they eventually look almost like statues, the only way to reverse this is to dump large amounts of blood on the starved vampire and allow it to absorb it through their skin.
My eyes went wide as I was reading the small paragraph covering the basics of vampires and what they can do. The two parts that stuck out the most were the greater physical capabilities and improved magical affinities. ‘Could that be the reason why Darius seemed to be so powerful yet lacked any real experience when it came to fighting someone on his level? He was definitely strong and magically gifted, but he lacked skill which was why the paladin Aulus was able to take him down so quickly.’
I thought back to the fight, it was just as clear in my mind as when it first happened. I recalled Titia the stone elf illusionist distracting Darius long enough for the paladins to get into position and jump through the windows all at once. I recalled how Aulus and Darius were about roughly matched physically and how skill was what allowed Aulus to strike him in both the arm and chest in rapid succession ending the fight in less than a minute.
I thought back to the weapons I conjured with the Free Handed Earth Weapon spell, wondering if I had enough power in the spell to defeat him just as quickly as Aulus was able to. ‘Pride was what forced Darius into close range where Aulus used his superior skill to destroy the vampire. I need to get him close enough so that I can hit with the spell and keep him restrained so he can’t move. Looks like I am going to need to practice even more for a while if I want to even have a chance of beating him.’
With a rough plan in my mind I closed the book and placed it off to the side and in its place I brought over the new book titled A Beast Hunters Guild To Vampires. This book was much smaller than the first, but that was due to the sheer variety of what was contained.
The first page was very similar to Magical Beasts and Where They Come From as it went over the basics of what a vampire is and what basic abilities they have. It was the second page where things started getting interesting.
While the idea that vampires are afraid or harmed by the daylight is just a myth you should consider that every myth is rooted in fact, and it is a fact that most vampires chose to commit their vile acts during the night when they will be less likely to be noticed by others.
Silver being especially dangerous to vampires is also a myth, this stems from the early vampire hunters using silver weapons that were enchanted with divine magic to better kill unholy creatures. The reason these early vampire and monster hunter orders chose silver was due to the decent enchanting capacity and the relative cheapness of silver compared to the other far higher magical capacity metals such as adamantine.
The second and third page continued listing and explaining the origins of various myths regarding vampires, one that stood out was the myth that vampires were repelled by garlic. The origin was apparently a mixture of both a mistranslation from another language and one prominent vampire having an allergy to garlic as a mortal.