Juniper is in no condition to throw down with any of the feathered nemeses of demon kind right now.
'Okay, noble souls attract the gate of heaven, noted. Maybe I should add some kind of interference ability to myself. Would've been pretty bad if I killed one of them and then be too preoccupied with the others while one of them called down the forces of heaven.' Pulling up her system, she quickly makes a rough design to be explored at a later time before closing it again.
Standing up from her crouch, the moth, now looking much healthier than she had moments before thanks to the vitality absorbed from Trevor, steps over to Alucard who is getting pressed to the ground by her conquerors haki.
"Don't beat yourself too hard pretty boy, in a different version of this world, you and your friends succeeded in the endeavour and put Dracula to rest… two times actually." Placing her palm on his blond hair, Juniper activates [Draining Touch] and absorbs the abundant lifeforce in the half-vampire's body.
It's so much that she could feel how her severed antenna and the flesh and bones of her damaged arm regrow a bit.
'Probably need to hunt down some more victims to fully recover.' She thinks while quickly sweeping the emerging soul of Alucard into her system before the light of heaven even had the time to appear.
Unsurprisingly it too was a noble soul.
Making her way over to the last of the trio, the moth arrives in front of the barely alive Sypha.
Looking at the weakly breathing woman, she gently raises her chin and locks eyes with her blurred gaze.
"It would be a shame for all your knowledge to simply be forgotten, so I will take it upon myself to learn it all." She says to the speaker girl before beginning to drain the remaining life out of her.
Unable to even speak, the magician's eyes tear up a bit as her body dries up, her life fuelling Juniper's recovery.
Catching the last soul, she completes the trio of noble souls that were ready to sacrifice themselves in their quest to stop the great evil that is Dracula.
Sadly for them, their story ended prematurely because of the interference of a certain demonic moth.
"Haa, that was hella exhausting. But hehehehahaha it was totally worth it." Letting herself fall onto the ground, Juniper closes her eyes and takes the time to rest a bit.
'My mastery over both armament and observation haki has increased immensely. The delay between sensing and reaction has been reduced to almost nothing. Then there is the fact that I can now cover projectiles in armament haki and the knowledge that it can counter my weakness against holy attribute weapons and attacks. A great bounty on that front.' Lazily laying in the grass filled with ice shards that quickly start to melt upon contact with the demoness, she relaxes her hurting body.
'I also can now sense magic accurately and act accordingly. This will be a big advantage down the line. Other than that, there is the new way of enhancing my movement with psychokinesis and actual mastery over the spear.' Spending a good four hours just lying there, the moth recovered enough to get going again.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Once up, she starts to loot the bodies of the three, would have been heroes.
Alucard's sword was interesting for its enchantments, she would look into that once she had access to the libraries in the castle.
The Morningstar whip got covered in a bunch of cloth and thrown into the system with a note in the back of her head that she could add a modifier to stop it from harming her and then use it against other unholy creatures, maybe even in her fight against the king of vampires himself.
The throwing knives and short sword on Trevor were not of much use but she stored them anyway, the luxury of an infinite storage space.
Of course, Juniper did not simply leave the bodies behind either, they joined the pile in her inventory before she made her way back to the underground keep, only to find it sealed again.
'Well fuck, seems like I will have to get this done first.' Not in the mood, physical condition and willing to destroy the ward that protected the entrance as it is quite the interesting piece of magic with decent power, the moth pulled out the item she had invested a whole 1k worth of souls into before stepping onto the Belmont's premise.
[Soul prison Tome: A leatherbound book that can imprison souls and conserve them indefinitely until removed. The tome binds to the first person that drips their blood onto the first page and grants them the ability to add or remove souls, to and from it. By opening the book, one can delve into the memories of the souls imprisoned within and learn their secrets. For all readers not bound to the book there is the danger of being corrupted by the thoughts, memories and feelings of the souls within. Attempts to damage it will cause it to be automatically stored in the system inventory. Can be called to the person bound to it at any time.]
Holding the unassuming brown book in her clawed hand, Juniper opens it on the first page and gathers some of the blood staining her wounds before letting it drop onto the paper.
As the purplish-red blood drips on the page, sinking into the paper, it forms a vaguely moth shaped splatter.
Then an ominous dark green pulse washed across the tome, turning the white pages into a dirty brown and the leather sickly green.
Inspecting the book's new look, the moth nods in appreciation at the new design.
Moving on, she quickly tested the recall function and the emergency storing function.
Throwing the book into the sky, it appeared in her hand with but a thought.
Attempting to rip out a page caused it to disappear from her grasp and appear in the long list of stuff stored in her inventory.
Satisfied, she pulls out three crystal clear souls that caused salvia to gather in her mouth.
The three high-grade noble souls from the trio she had fought earlier exuded an extremely tempting aroma.
Before she could be swayed by their appetizing smell, the moth pushed the three souls into the book's cover.
Sinking into the tome, the book starts to vibrate and then three loud shrieks resound as the faces of Trevor, Sypha and Alucard press against the inside of the leather cover, seemingly trying to escape from within.
They scream and moan for a few seconds before freezing, their expressions now adoring the cover of the tome.
Grinning widely at how dramatic the scene turned out, Juniper chuckles happily.
"Now this is a lot more fun than some simple mind reading." Flipping the book open at a random page, she stares at the blank paper.
As she does, black ink seeps out from the centre and floods across both pages and beyond.
Watching how the ink spills over the edges only to dissipate into black mist whenever it touched something, the moth found herself praising the system's artistic sense even more.
Turning to stare at the moving sea of darkness covering the pages, she could see three lonely specks of light adrift the black waves like feeble ships in midst a stormy night.
Glancing at them, she could "read" their basic information from the souls sealed within, such as names, age, race, cause of death and appearance.
Identifying the one of Sypha Belnades, Juniper's gaze dives deeper into the soul, whose entire life gets laid out and displayed like an extremely detailed biography.
All thoughts, emotions and memories laid clear before her eyes, but at the same time, there is an invisible wall keeping all of it contained.
Making it so that only the information Juniper desired could leave the coffins of the prison tome, keeping her from being tainted by the life of another.
Narrowing her eerily glowing green eyes surrounded by abyssal black, she skipped across the decades of life till it reached the point where Sypha arrived at the Belmont hold with her two companions.
Spending a moment to learn the required incantation to open, and the concept behind the ward, the moth snaps the book shut.
*thumb!*
Putting it away for now, she takes hold of her magic power and mimicked the speaker magician to open the passage into the underground keep.
Succeeding, she makes her way down the already familiar path with a skip in her steps as she decides to bunker down for a while and digest the knowledge from the three souls stored in the [Soul prison Tome] additionally to stuffing everything in the basement into her inventory before it was time to go and claim her castle.