"Dracula!" Came Isaac's desperate shout as he leaps down the stairs as fast as he could before rushing across the demolished hall towards the horribly maimed form of his friend and master lying on the ground in a puddle of his own flesh and blood.
A small horde of night-creatures follows their master and move to position themselves between him and the still laughing Juniper holding the smoking gun.
The vampire soldiers and council members remained standing in the corridor, unwilling to put themselves into danger for their seemingly already defeated master.
Arriving next to the old vampire, the Forgemaster drops to his knees and stares with panicked eyes at the bloody mess that half of his friend now consisted of.
"Ugh… I-Isaac?" The vampire king manages to mutter as his remaining eye cracks open.
"Yes, it is me my friend. Now drink!" The dark-skinned man answers before slitting his own wrist without a moment of hesitation and hold it to Dracula's mouth.
"As touching as this is, I sadly can't let it happen." The demonic moth chirps from right next to Isaac.
"Huh?!" He barely managed to utter before a chitin clad backhand slams into his cheek and sends him spinning through the air.
The night-creatures who were unable to react to the immense speed at which she had moved, start screeching and roaring as they charge to attack her and defend their master.
Instead of doing anything to defend herself against the incoming horde of dozens of beasts, Juniper pulls out another item from her inventory while holding the bulky Bolter with one main hand and one sub arm in front of her chest.
It's a strange pink fruit with lots of swirls on it and in the shape of a pear.
She takes a bite out of this fruit with a grin right before the bone blade making up the arm of the fastest night-creature reached her.
Then the blade tears through her, bisecting the moth's body.
"Ke ke ke he he he ha ha hahahahaha!" The demoness crackles loudly as the two halves start to turn into thick green gas with grey wisps that simply merge again as if nothing happened.
[Gasu Gasu No Mi (Awakened): Gas devil fruit without weakness to the sea and compatible with other devil fruits. Allows the transformation into gas, manipulation of gas, creation of gas and turning surrounding matter into gas.
Comes with perfect mastery over its abilities. Tastes like strawberry.]
Continuing laughing madly as more and more beasts tear into her with no effect whatsoever other than churning the gas into which she had turned, her form begins to grow larger and larger till she became a four-meter-tall silhouette made out of billowing green and grey gas that ominously looms over all of them.
An inhumanly large grin made out of ivory, needle-like teeth flanked by grey mandible stretches across her face while a pair of glowing green orbs surrounded by abyssal darkness form her eyes and two black horns manifest on her forehead.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Crushing the remains of the devil fruit, on which she had spent a whole 1k, in her large clawed hand, she releases a loud screeching roar while spreading out her four arms and wings.
*SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECHHHHH!!!*
A shockwave of both psychokinesis and conquerors haki pushes all the attacking night-creatures away while leaving the battered mess of a vampire in front of her untouched.
'So, this is how a magic power circuit feels.' Juniper thinks while relishing in the sensation of her magic power freely flowing through the channels that had opened up around her heart.
There were also a few nods along the twisting paths, but not many as of yet.
'Hm, the circuit is currently quite small, just like the number of nods within, but still just big enough for all of my magic power to circulate through it. If I understand it correctly, then, if I expand my reserves of magic power, both, the size of the circuit and number of nods, will also grow, increasing the potency of my magic with the respective attribute.' Quickly analysing the changes that she had undergone with the consumption of the system created devil fruit, the demoness feels very excited.
Focusing back on the situation at hand, she is eager to try out some new things.
With that, the spread-out wings, also made out the same green and grey gas, burst and flood the entire interior of the hall, including stairs and the corridor behind the throne.
"Let's see how this is going to work out~." Came Juniper's distorted voice from the inhuman mouth once every being in the castle is swallowed up by the gas.
1.5 high-grade souls drain from her reserves into [Draining Touch]
[Draining Touch: Can drain the vitality (New) and/or magic power, of a target upon touch and use it to heal, recover and enhance the user. Ignores physical resistances like armour, clothes, scales, fur or hide. (New) The skill can be channelled through weapons, tools or attacks.]
Immediately, the horde of night-creatures, vampire's soldiers and council members trapped within the gas filling the hall and corridor start to shrivel up and collapse as their life and magic drains out of them.
"HAHAHAHAHA!!!" The moth laughs menacingly as vitality and magic power fills her gaseous body as she channels her skill through the spread-out gas, allowing her to drain everyone trapped within simultaneously.
'Looks like this combo works out just fine.' Once the last victim collapses dead as a dried-up husk and the escaping souls are stored away, the gas in the surroundings quickly gathered back up and reforms into the large moth wings at the back of the towering form of Juniper's billowing body.
After this move, the only remaining living, and unliving, beings in the castle except for herself are the dark-skinned Forgemaster who managed to pick himself up by now after receiving a heavy hit right to his face, and the glaring form of the heavily injured king of vampires.
Holding the previously giant [Boltgun] in a single hand now, Juniper grins down at her beaten foe.
"Told you this is how far you would go~." Reaching out with a three fingered hand, she grabs Isaac via psychokinesis and brings him over where her claws close around his throat.
"Or at least the current you." She says with a sadistic tone in her distorted voice as she begins to clench her fingers tighter around the struggling human's neck.
The Forgemaster tries to claw at the hand holding him, but his fingers harmlessly pass right through the green and grey gas making up the moth's body.
Pulling out his knife, he struck the limb, and instead of passing through it like his previous attempt, the blade sank through a few centimetres of gas before making contact with something solid.
'Hm, so magic indeed does counter my elementalization. I wonder why this is, but that will have to wait till later. For now, it is good enough to know that it does.' The demoness note's this before activating [Draining Touch] to absorb the magic within the Forgemaster's focus tool, turning it into a normal knife, which causes it to phase through the arm just like the other attempts before.
Continuing on, she doesn't let this revelation interrupt her performance and she tightens her grip a bit more.
Mind growing hazy and vision becoming blurry as his air supply is cut off, Isaac becomes panicked and drops the now useless knife.
"How about it? Why don't you return to the old you, maybe then you can avenge the life of your FRIEND! *CRACK!* here~. "With a sudden jerk and increase in strength, the feeble neck of the human broke with a loud snap as his entire body went limp.
Dropping the dead Forgemaster without a single care, both beings remain silent as a bluish white whisp exits the corpse and begins to float up.
Taking hold of the soul with psychokinesis, she brings it towards her open palm.
"But if even this isn't enough of a reason… then let me present to you my last card." Closing her hand around the soul, she stores it away to be studied at a later time.
Reaching into her gaseous form with another hand, the moth pulls it out shortly after again and throws a shrivelled corpse at Dracula.
The single crimson eye glaring at her with great angers widens in horror.
Ignoring the terrible damage done to his body, the old vampire moves with incredible speed to catch the falling body as gently as he could.
Looking down at the dried-up face of the body in his arm, bloody tears begin to run down his check.
"… my boy." He mutters with grief and pain filled voice.
Lowering his tear-stricken face to cradle the cold dead body of his son while his entire body shook from silent sobs, Dracula mourns the death of his child.
Witnessing this emotional scene, Juniper smirks before training the barrel of her gun at the head of Alucard's corpse and pulls the trigger.
*BAM!*
*SPLAT*